Hi Nancy!
I have a thermolyne laboratory hot plate, it is for heating stuff up in glass beakers and things like that. It gets to 750 degrees f. Lots of people are having plenty of success with electric hotplates that look like range eyes on a stove. You could also just put the tip of the rod into your hot kiln to preheat, that works great and is even hotter if you garage your beads at annealing temp. My kiln sits there at 960 while I'm working so it is good for preheating rods.
Personally, I don't think the cup warmer hot plate would be enough to preheat a fat rod of clear...there just isn't enough ambient heat to keep the rod hot all the way around through its whole thickness. I'd go with the kiln. You see in the tutorial that even my rod still cracked because I rushed it. I started using it before it was actually preheated enough and I only used 9mm rod for the tutorial. I usually use 12mm so that is even more of a heat requirement.
Good luck!
~~Mary
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