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Swore off thermal cameras for years after one gave me garbage readings, then an old coworker from Tulsa set me straight
A buddy of mine named Ray who I worked with at a shop in Tulsa back in the day called me up last week just to catch up, and somehow we got onto the topic of thermal cameras for chasing down wire chafing. For 4 years I've been telling anyone who would listen that those things are a waste of money because the first one I bought kept showing me hot spots that turned out to be nothing, just reflections off shiny metal. Ray asked what I was pointing it at and what the emissivity setting was on, and I had to admit I never touched that setting once, just pulled it out of the case and started scanning. He said half the bad reviews he sees on these come from guys doing the exact same thing and never adjusting for the surface they're checking. He walked me through it over the phone for maybe 20 minutes, tape over the connector, set the emissivity right, and suddenly the thing was showing me a chafed wire on a flap motor that I'd been chasing for two days with a multimeter. I felt like a moron but honestly also kind of relieved that it was me and not the tool. Anybody else get burned by not reading the manual on a piece of gear and write it off way too early?
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lane.angela12d ago
Ray from Tulsa gave you good advice but I don't buy that every bad thermal reading is user error. Some of those cheap cameras just have junk sensors and no amount of emissivity tweaking fixes a blurry mess with 20 degree swings.
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