I’m looking to invest in a thermal imaging camera to help me develop my hotend and extruders further. The budget is tight so i can’t invest thousands. So far my eye is on the thermal seek reveal. Does anyone already use it for a similar purpose or has an alternative in the <500 Euro range.
http://www.seek-thermal.de/
http://www.amazon.de/Seek-Reveal-Handheld-Thermal-Flashlight/dp/B015FBI37K
Fluke makes one that is an iPhone case 
So, all digital cameras already have a high affinity for infra red already, which is why they have IR filters on them, so I’d think the cheapest solution is to buy a web camera for about $35 and remove the IR filter. This is commonly done by gamers in creating a head tracking device, so you can surely find tutorials on youtube. Adjusting the settings of the camera, you can then almost certainly get it to image you hotend to suite your needs. A little speculations here, but I don’t think it would be difficult to achieve.
Most smartphone solutions and also the cmos cameras without ir filter don’t have the temperature range i need. I need up to 300C.
@Jon_Burgin digital cameras are sensitive to near infrared light, thermal radiation is in far infrared spectrum. That being said regular digital camera cannot be used as a thermal camera by removing IR filter. I have the seek camera, I’ll take a pic of my extruder tonight if I don’t forget.
Good to know!
The Flir One is limited to between 0°C and 100°C
Also keep in mind that no thermal camera will give reliable readings of shiny metallic surfaces.
If you really want an accurate profile, I would suggest using thermocouples. Thermal imaging is good at giving you a quick snapshot of the heat zones, but it’s not able to give you accurate measurements.
Wouldn’t putting a piece of extra light blocking film decrease the amount of heat received? Some calibration would be necessary, of course. Could someone loan you the thermal camera?
They have a nice small one for like $260 that goes on a raspberry pi.
@Thomas_Sanladerer Yes, but different to an IR thermometor you have a chance to see the reflection and work with it.
@Evan_Nguyen A thermocouple would be a lot more precise, but i wouldn’t be able to determine what parts of the extruder, cooling system and environment is influenced how much. In my case the thermocouple and wire would have a real influence on airflow in some of the mor eimportant parts, that’s why i want to do it optically.
Stupid question, but is there a temperature sensitive paint for up to 300c? Then you could use a normal video camera or webcam.
There is, but i honestly don’t want to mess my hotend up with paint. Also that would help against reflections in the thermal image, but a normal camera still hasn’t got the IR capabilities i need.
I did thermovisionon my E3D and advise you to put paint or electrical-tape on the metall-things you want to test. Not talking about all the reflections, I am talking about very wrong temerature-readings! The termocam I used was one for about 5000€.
Example-Pic I took: http://forums.reprap.org/file.php?252,file=72775
Hotend was, iirc, set at 250 deg Celsius. Blank metall like the clean alu heater block showed 100 deg, while stuck filament on the same block showed the correct 250deg.
@Rene_Jurack thank you for the hint, luckily there is very little blank metal involved
@Bjorn_Marl As I promised yesterday, here is a thermal image of my hotend made by my seek thermal camera module for android. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2807353/img_thermal_1456193502906.jpg As you can see both hardware and software is a total garbage.
@Michal_Canecky
That doesn’t look promising 
Thank you. I might have the chance to try the Reveal of a friend from Hackerspace FFM. If that doesn’t work out i’ll can the idea for now.
YouTuber mjlorton recently did a 3-part series on thermal cameras, maybe something there will be of use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_t8FNb7Wu0