Anyone have any recommendations for thermal imaging cameras that will actually provide useful readings? I know of FLIR cameras. Wondering if there’s any other brands anyone has used. Even better if you can link to a product you’ve used before for thermal imaging that you recommend. Need this for our hotends to test them.
I have a FLIR and like it, for what that’s worth, and when I measure it with respect to a thermal forcer we have at work, it’s within about 4 degrees C. It does require some messing about with emissivity settings.
@John_Bump What model do you have? Have you tried using it on a hotend? How good are the readings would you say if you have?
A friend and I share a FLIR E4 that we hacked to an E8 (4x the screen resolution.) I haven’t used it on a hotend because my friend does the 3d printing. We printed an insert to put a zinc selenide lens in it so we could do closeup shots. here’s a picture I took of an arduino board running: https://flic.kr/p/igAqx8 and here’s a closeup of the atmega328: https://flic.kr/p/igALeJ
At work I have access to an intest/temptronic thermostream that can force any temp from -50C up to 180C. It measures its output with k-type thermocouples and is calibrated yearly to accurately read and hold temperatures to within 1 degree C. If I set the FLIR emissivity to 0.93 and point it at a piece of PCB that the thermostream is blasting with air at, say, 120C, the FLIR usually measures within 4C of the thermostream’s reported temp. (And that’s probably within the range of reasonable measurement, because the temp to which it heats the air is higher than the target, and measuring the target with a thermocouple is likely to give a different answer than with a thermal camera as they’re not at the same point in space.) Downside of the FLIR is the cost, obviously. I think it’s overkill for what you’re doing: I’d use a thermocouple and a calibrated multimeter, personally. But man you can’t beat seeing the whole unit and how heat is moving through it. (and taking pictures of your dog and finding where there are heat leaks in your house or exhaust leaks in your old car or ten dozen other things.)
yeah, I looked into renting a FLIR… hard to find one. Even renting is expensive. I could also buy one and then return it but prefer to return it to a local store rather than ship it back since these things cost several hundred… if not thousands of dollars.
There’s a newer thing called a FLIR One, that’s just the imager and you use a cellphone as the display. About a thousand dollars cheaper, but I don’t know how well they work. I know they don’t use shutter calibration.
IIRC, home improvement stores like Home Depot rent FLIR cameras for doing energy audits on your house.
@Tim_Visible Yes I saw that, but they appear to be out of stock here or might have stopped doing it.
I bought one of these to find a water leak in my house. I did want to spend the $ on a flir. http://www.thermal.com/thermal-cameras