Becoming a well rounded industrial thermographer involves many facets. An essential part of the thermography puzzle is knowing where to look during an infrared inspection.
No one can be expected to know everything about every machine in existence. A person can be exposed to the knowledge of equipment and how it is constructed or laid out in a variety of ways. Basic machine principles can be picked up from a book or a training course. The classroom is a great start, but, the true knowledge will come from OJT (on the job training). There are millions of machines in this world which means you will spend a lifetime learning them and really never complete the course.
When confronted with an inspection of unfamiliar equipment, there are a few simple steps you can take to prevent feeling overwhelmed by the task.
1.) First and foremost, don’t hesitate to get assistance from a person that knows the equipment. Most people are more than glad to help when they can.
2.) Divide the equipment into subcomponents. For instance, you can start with the power side and the work side. From there, you take the two sides and break them down into their subsets. The power side can be divided into outside and inside, control and power, before and at the machine. You can break it down between high, low, medium or control voltage.
3.) Breakdown the machine into its working parts, such as driver and driven, rotating, hydraulics, product contact area, pneumatic, plumbing, and so on.
When you can stand in front a machine that you have never seen before and mentally break it down into its subcomponents, you will see that most all machines have the same basic parts. As a thermographer, you don’t need to know how the machine works, but, you do need to know how to find what makes it work.
A great example of knowing the parts of a machine, but not knowing how it works, is the human body. Humans come in all shapes, colors, sizes and working conditions and, unless you are a doctor, knowing how the body works can be a mystery. I may not be a doctor, but I know the body has pumps (heart, lungs), a power feed (digestive system), a control (brain), circuitry (nervous system), actuators (muscles), and bearings (joints).
As you can see, the human body, as complicated as it truly is, can be reduced to smaller more understandable subcomponents. The only true difference between all of these machines is the product it produces during its time on earth.