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Calibration Intervals: How Often?
Like any other measuring instrument, infrared imagers require periodic calibration. One of the most often asked questions about imager calibration is how often to have it performed. The answer you get...
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Infrared Report Preparation
Infrared reports, what should be in them and what should not? If there was a one size fits all answer, life would certainly be easier! But, each type of inspection requires different information to be...
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Electrical Switching Devices: Making Thermal Sense
Switches are pretty widely utilized in electrical applications. They can go by any number of names, depending on the particular application. In utility applications we hear terms like “air breaker” or...
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Program Development 101: The Magic Ingredient
Program Development 101: The Magic Ingredient As we wind down the calendar year and prepare for 2014 many of us find ourselves setting goals and making resolutions. What are your professional goals as...
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The Power of Infrared
I have been an on-site thermographer and currently work as traveling service thermographer. These working methods at first seem to be very different, and in many ways they are. There are also quite a...
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A Look Back at Infrared - What I Wish I had Learned Earlier
Someone recently asked me, after my 15 years in this technology, what would I have liked to know in the beginning?Infrared was in a sense a novelty in the beginning, a way to do something other bending...
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What the “Bleep” caused that?
Few things are more exciting for me than finding a thermal anomaly I have never seen before or one I cannot quickly figure out its cause. Well, there may be a couple other things I find exciting, but...
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Happy Thermographer Feet
Happy Feet. What a cute movie with singing and tap dancing penguins (my little niece loves the movie). However, I’m not going to be talking about penguins in this blog. Instead, I’m talking about the...
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Reflectivity and Emissivity - Peas and Carrots
One of the most difficult concepts for most new thermographers to grasp is the relationship between emissivity and reflectivity. Of the many technical inquiries posed to us at The Snell Group, I would...
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Trailing with Infrared
During deer season a couple of years ago, a good friend of mine was out in the woods with his longbow and self-made arrows. All of his stuff was self-made; the bow, the arrows, the quiver, the tree...
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Image Format
Man, I love how technology is progressing. My first cell phone was so big that my arm got tired toting it around – a dinosaur only Zack Morris could make look fashionable. The one I have now is tiny...
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Heat Transfer in 3D
You don’t need special glasses to read this blog. Also, I’m not talking about the kind of 3D you see in a theater. What I’d like to discuss is heat transfer, one of my favorite topics. In our Level I –...
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Cold and Flu Season
Nothing is worse than being a traveling contractor and having a cold or the flu. Sick days are typically not an option when the job is scheduled, flight plans have been made, the hotel reservation...
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What do Thermographers and Vampires Have in Common?
No, this isn’t the first line of a bad joke. Thermographers, like vampires, have a serious aversion to the sun. Thermographers won’t burst in to flame and become a pile of ash, but the effects of the...
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Thinking Thermally® at Breakfast; Part II
Last time we tackled breakfast beverages and how they can illustrate thermal topics. Breakfast time is one opportunity to find examples of thermal magic in our everyday lives. Once you start down the...
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Heat Related Injuries & The Thermographer
Heat injuries such as heat cramps, heat stress, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and dehydration are very serious and can often sneak up on thermographers. Often the victim is not aware of how bad of...
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Alphabet Soup & Safety
I was in the military for the better part of a decade. Hence, acronyms are something I’ve grown accustomed to, but sometimes their overuse gets downright ridiculous. I had an e-mail from a former...
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Infrared Cameras and Digital Images - The Good, Bad, and Ugly
The majority of thermal imaging systems have an on-board digital camera. Personally, I think it’s a great addition to IR cameras and many other people do, also. Although this feature is very handy,...
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Vision Tests and Thermography
Do you wear eyeglasses? Maybe you are used to going to the eye doctor annually and occasionally needing to update your prescription. What you may not know is that, regardless if you wear eye glasses...
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Mechanical Routes Not Just Infrared
As a beginner infrared tech, one is often very fixated on the thermal side of the mechanical route. Which is great, but as an “outsider,” someone of a different department, you have the ability to see...
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Blank Check
Sometimes during the early stages of a program development, the question will come up; how valuable is an infrared program? You may hear individuals ask, “Do we really need it and the hassle that goes...
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IR Inspections and Qualified Escorts
For thermographers, escorts are defined as “an electrical escort who is familiar with the site and the electrical equipment to be surveyed,” and someone who will “remove and replace all panel covers...
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Buildings
For those of us that don’t frequently inspect buildings with infrared, it may seem at first glance to be an easy job. However, thermographers must take care to interpret misleading patterns...
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Return on your Training Dollar - Part I
No one can argue the benefit of skilled training. There’s an old adage about knowledge being something that can’t be taken away from you. How true a statement is this? Once we’ve learned something, we...
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Return on Your Training Dollar - Part 2
Welcome to the continuation of Return on Your Training Dollar. When we left off we were discussing the importance of training, particularly the independent training agency approach. Independent...
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