Previously, thermal imaging software may have seemed the stuff of CSI or James Bond; better connected with spotting Russian agents in the Arctic tundra, or tracing the footprints of a fleeing criminal. And many of those associations currently apply.
The police regularly use thermal imagers to spot the distinctive heat patterns given off by cannabis factories, otherwise hidden within everyday houses or garden sheds. In spite of this, in current times the introduction of less costly, user-friendly technology has seen thermal imaging rolled out across a much wider and perhaps surprising range industries. Mike Berrie, of thermal imaging specialists Irisys, explains, “easy-to-use thermal imaging technology can be of benefit in measuring, monitoring and identifying problem areas that have previously been hard to find, all at an affordable price”.
The cabability to spot diverse regions of heat has security uses more than simply catching bad guys. Banks and other institutions can use thermal images to measure where heat is being lost around security doors – a good indicator of exactly how strongly covered that area is. Similarly, stores and supermarkets can check the gasket seals on cold storage areas (e.g. freezer and chiller cabinets), ensuring their produce remains fresh and they are not using unnecessarily high levels of electricity to keep it so.
Until recently, organizations would have had to rent specialist contractors to perform these types of investigations as the charge of temperature measurement machine – between $40,000 and $60,000 – rendered ownership of the technology prohibitively pricy. The advent of cheaper thermal imagers, such as Irisys’s IR16DS, mean not only that these contractors can work more easily, more cheaply and more quickly, but also that non-specialists can purchase their own equipment.
The advent of cheaper thermal imagers, such as Irisys’s IR16DS, mean not only that these contractors can work more easily, more cheaply and more quickly, but also that non-specialists can purchase their own equipment. The long term savings are not only clear, but preventative maintenance is a more practical consideration as one does not risk spending large amounts of money only to find out that nothing is wrong. The most interesting thing is that, Thermal imaging can even identify uses in your own home. We’re a cost conscious lot these days.
Every body is looking for some ways to save money – of course, if it can benefit us go green simultaneously, all the better. Thermal imaging can show you where your house is losing the most heat; peer through the viewfinder and recognize those houses with poor loft insulation lit up like a Christmas tree. If there is a a blockage in your central heating system that will lead to absence of heat to large areas of your house. Again, thermal imagers can show you the exact location of the blockage and cut down on call out times.
They’re also useful in spotting potentially hazardous electrical faults – always encouraging – and can pick out areas of excess moisture, helping you catch damp before it sets in. Noticing electrical faults is also beneficial in the (literally) high flying world of aerospace engineering. The electrical devices of aeroplanes are normally tightly packed into narrow cavities in the fuselage and conventional servicing can entail the disassembling of large areas in the search for a problem. Again, thermal imagers reduce time and cost. There are also another benefits like the ability to spot air leakages quickly and the power to measure the heat generated by moving components.
We can’t trust in our own senses to recognize when individual components may be overheating expecially when in an already heated environments just like a ship’s engine room or a busy factory,We can easily manage that with the help of thermal imaging. And that really is only the start. The applications of temperature measurement equipment take care of additional industries as diverse as water treatment, research and development, transport, biotechnology, ceramics and even brewing. Certainly not the stuff of science fiction any longer; thermal imagers are hot.
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