Many of the modern motor testers today utilize a spectral analysis tool known as a Fast Fourier Transform or FFT for short. When reading up on motor test theory, this is a topic that is mentioned often and repeated almost as often, but when pressed for an explanation many folks find themselves scratching their heads. They’ve seen an FFT on their tester, and probably know how to interpret the data it provides, but may still be at a loss as to how it’s derived.

I quite often comment that I immensely enjoy my job, meeting new people, talking about IR thermography and all of its various applications, and assisting students after they get back to their respective facilities after class are all fun for me. As long as I’ve been at this, however, I have noticed patterns. One of the most common things we see is the expectation that having attended a Level I or even a Level II IR course in some way empowers the student to administer and manage a full inspection program. This simply isn’t true.

El tema de calibración y exactitud de las mediciones de las cámaras infrarrojas podría muchas veces desatar diferentes opiniones.

During the Introduction portion of our Level II course, I like to mention the value of understanding the limitations of your imager. Obviously, it’s important to understand what your imager can do, but often it’s as important to understand what it can’t do. This is especially important when discussing the capabilities of your imager to individuals who aren’t trained in the technology. I am continuously astounded by how many otherwise savvy people think that IR imagers work exactly as they’re portrayed in movies and television. So, let’s take a look; what they can and can’t do.

You have heard the phrase “NEW doesn’t necessarily mean good.” How about this one from way back in my high school football days, “Your team is only as good as the worst guy on the bench.” Both these phrases can be applied to your spare motor inventory. Let’s add the word motor to the first phrase and motor reliability to the second; new motor doesn’t necessarily mean good motor; your motor reliability is only as good as your worst motor on the bench, or in the warehouse.

I'm not in the holiday spirit, that's not what I'm going for here, although I must admit when I typed that the song popped into my head. Now I can't get rid of it. The things I subject myself to for the edification of our faithful thermographers...

The topic of calibration and accuracy of measurement in infrared imaging systems is one that tends to stir debate when it inevitably comes up. Most trained thermographers understand the limitations of radiometric temperature measurement and have learned techniques to improve the reliability of the temperatures their cameras report. But many still aren’t sure how to check their accuracy in the field, or how often this should be done.

Old School VS New - Annotations and Inspection Details

As technology changes it’s important to keep an open mind and recognize that things change, processes change and that there’s benefit to exploring new approaches to just about anything. Let me say that I can be set in my ways and in fact I take pride in being “old fashioned” about some things.

Mi trabajo es muy divertido, pues tengo la oportunidad de pasar tiempo con nuevos grupos de personas en cada clase que dicto, tengo la oportunidad de hablar de algo que me gusta mucho, y en varias ocasiones puedo ayudar a estudiantes luego de los cursos de entrenamiento. Si han tomado alguna de mis clases, saben que motivo a mis estudiantes a contactarme luego de los cursos si tienen preguntas. Muchas veces, aprendo nuevas cosas al resolver las preguntas de otras personas, que luego en algunas ocasiones me ayudan a escribir blogs acerca de un tema específico, algunas veces.

One aspect of camera improvement in recent years that seems to have lagged is the quality of the onboard digital camera. My first IR imager didn’t even have one, so anything is an improvement over that. Or at least you would think. One of the things that you’ll discover that us “old school” thermographers have mastered is capturing images with a digital camera with very close symmetry and field of view compared to the thermal image captured with whatever camera we’re using. That comes from years of having to do that because we had nothing else.