What does one of those infra red cameras cost? I convinced my boss to look into getting one for PM.

Is it possible to even rent them?

Unless it's a million dollars, it's probably worth it. The EC we use here at work scanned our whole facility for free when he got his. When he showed the owner the red and orange spots up in the ceilings that he never gave any thought to, he decided to have $25,000 in upgrades done. Best sales tool I'd seen anybody use on that tightwad.

I believe you can rent a unit from www.flir.com.

Edward

Mean Gene,

Tell me more. What kind of stuff did this tool reveal?

Check Out this site; http://www.prothermographer.com
Was looking into them a while back. They are pretty pricey!!! When I can come up with the cash I will be buying one.

Show us some cool pics if you get one.
Bill

A good high quality thermal imaging setup can cost $20,000 or more.
(I own a $100 IR thermometer, and even it is a lot of help at times)

Hang on a moment guys!.
Are you talking IR heat sensing gear or Non-Contact Thermometers?.
Over here Ashburton 621 (our first Turn-out Appliance) has portable IR heat sensing gear for Fire Incidents, valued at NZ$30,000.
Aside from that, I use a Fluke NC Thermometer valued at NZ$400, is good for 25 metres.
I use it to check transformer temperatures, from the ground, it has a 0.005 degree C resolution.

Jps1006,

Sorry for the delay; I got so far behind on the posts I forgot where I left off. Mostly what they found around here was branch circuits that had been added on to so many times over the years (the bldg is 70 yrs old) that they were severely overloaded. Most of these circuits were older ones that were still protected by fuses, and sad enough to say had been over fused. There were also over stuffed 1900 boxes up in the exposed ceilings, some with covers and some without, that were showing warm. The rewire job was rather extensive. I might have been low on that $25k price; it was a few years ago now. The EC had 6 guys pulling new home runs for a week. They came back on the weekend when we were closed to cut over the system and change out the panels (fuse for breaker). New aerial service drop, 400A main panel (GE).

Mike (Trumpy),

I assumed that Drillman was talking about the IR heat sensing gear. I didn't catch the brand name on the machine our EC had in here. It was on a two wheeled cart, almost like a dolly. It had a moveable (pointable) camera lens on the top near the front and a small color (of course) screen (4-5 inch) toward the rear facing upwards. It definitely caught my eye. I followed that guy around like a puppy dog.


[This message has been edited by Mean Gene (edited 05-26-2004).]

I was in a steel plant where they had thermal imaging done yearly. It took two days to do a large part of the plant, which was pretty fast considering the amount of equipment. I opened and closed doors on MCC's steady, with very little spare time. When I took the backs off switch gear, I fell behind.

The camera was hand-held, and the fellow doing the imaging wore a belt of batteries.

I didn't see the image through the camera. The report was in black and white, with the hot spots very light or white.

Faults detected were loose connections, bad knives on switches, and one undersized fuse.

The system has some limitations. The equipment must be running or have been running recently; and, where the heat travelled along the conductor, I had to pin-point the problem with a voltmeter.

It's advantage, besides speed, is that high voltage connections can be checked, if they are visible.

Any place where down-time is calculated in thousands of dollars per minute, thermal imaging is the way to go.