Thermal Imagers

Are you working on a board with temperature (components) crossing dangerous limits or reaching the thresholds? Then how do you track them? what you do to have your board safe? The one solution is to use thermal Imager. Thermal Imagers are used in the industry to mainly detect the temperature variations. Thermal Imager can be said Heat sensor. The principle of thermal imager depends on the fact that every object emits infra red radiation and the extent of emission depends on temperature. More the temperature more is the radiation. We can say that infrared radiation is the signature of temperature. Thermal Imager has the capability to capture the limited variations in temperature. Once the thermal imager collects the data it represents the data in a visual form which indicates the intensity of the temperature. Thermal Imagers add color variations based on the temperature. As commonly used, red indicates the high temperature area.

               

The basic ingredients of thermal Imager are:

• Special Optical lens
• Infrared detector (array)
• signal processing unit
• Display

The key specifications that define the thermal Imager are:

• Infrared Resolution
• Thermal Sensitivity
• Ability to create real image that is sensed
• Temperature measurement range
• Range of measurement
• Frame rate
• Detector type (Cooled/uncooled)
• Storage capability
• Battery operating time

The various vendors that provide Thermal Imagers are:

• Keysight technologies
• Fluke
• Testo
• FLIR

General facts:

• Thermal Imagers are accurate
• Generally, on board we have number of temperature sensors but they give a approximate of the value and may not always be accurate. Thermal Imagers can access any component with accurate results.
• Thermal Imagers can sense higher temperatures of  up to 1500+ degrees
• Thermal Imagers can't measure lower temperatures below 20 deg
• Greater the resolution of the sensor more the accuracy of the measurement.
• Thermal Imagers are fast and reliable
• Thermal profile is created by the signal processing unit o the thermal Imager
• If there are multiple devices in order, the thermal Imager can only catch the image of first device
• Thermal Imagers are also used for security purposes during night to catch any intruders
• Thermal Imagers are available as hand held devices
• Thermal Imagers can be used safely as they are used hand-held at a distance from the board