The tip does arc when you touch it to something, and if you try to solder for more than about a second the LED's dim to nothing, I'm asuming the battery is going into 'shock'. I looked up Energizers alkaline application manual and it says the short circuit current for a AA is about 10 amps. With four fully charged AA's that's about 60 watts of power for brief periods. I am a bit disapointed in the internal simplicity, the least they could have done was add a super cap or two, as it would increase battery life a good 50+% Especially at those current loads. You could probably use the wallwart idea if you had a few 10 volt high value super caps, but that would likley cost more than the entire ColdHeat tool in the first place, you're better off just buying yourself a decent soldering iron at that point. It's a nice gift, a simple quick and simple way to solder, or heat up any conductive object, and worse comes to worse it's a 6 volt battery pack. The tip's are relativly open on the outside, and will easily let you put 6 volts across a standard pair of jumper pins, or you could just as easily tap the battery directly, once the tip is removed the contacts are easily accesable.