[SOLVED] Thermal Imager Pros and Cons

Hello,

I would like to buy a Thermal Imager for my department but since they are an expensive equipment, it is not easy to convince "the boss" for this investment. He has just told me that there are some technical arguments for not buying this equipment since it is not precise and may give false results... in my opinion there is no reason for not buying it apart from its cost. If more precision is needed in a certain hot point, ok I have contact temperature probes.
We develop power electronic boards.
Could you please summarize some pros and cons of this hardware?

Thank you!

Ernest

Ernest
I do not have very much experience of these instruments, I have only used them for confirming thermal analysis results and for fault finding. If you need very accurate temperature measurements then perhaps it is not the instrument to use, but on the other hand how accurate is a thermal probe once you take into account the uncertainties in the interface between the probe and the unit under test.
It will give you a quick over view of the thermal characteristics of the object you are viewing, and on the model we have, a colour image that can be downloaded to a PC. This can be useful in report writing.
One thing you have to be careful about is the reflectivity of the surface you are viewing. Idealy it should be a black body, if not you will see the temperature of what ever is reflected from it. I had this problem, on one project where I needed to measure the case temperature of an aluminium housing. The case had been rasied to about 60 degrees but was only showing about 30 to 40 because it was reflective at infrared rather than a matt surface. The problem was easily overcome with some masking tape, the surface temperatre was then seen to be close to prediction and close to that viewed through a hole in the housing.
These instruments can be useful for fault finding, particularly finding short circuits on heavily populated boards, just look for an abnormal temperature. The viewer we have was purchased by our test department for just that purpose, finding PCB faults on multillayer boards populated with BGA integrated circuits.
These units may be expensive but in some circumstances they are the only way to get the job done, and as in the case of our test department can pay for themselves many times over in saved time.
Peter