New toy at work : Infrared Camera.

[LegoHead]

Got to play with a new toy at work today for thermal mapping of our motor electronics, but we couldnt be serious all day...:rasp:

 

[JackoR26]

haha sounds like a fun day

 

[Lagerlout]

lol... we've used these for years as part of our RCM regime. I think ours are ThermaCam actually. Is it yellow and black and shaped absolutely nothing like a camera? lol

Change it to black and white - Nice ghost pics lol

 

[Gary-Lew]

I hate thermographic surveys.

 

[Rob_Willow]

Cool. We use them at work for electrical thermo mapping of distribution boards. Expensive toys!

 

[Lagerlout]

I hate thermographic surveys.

Me too. It's alright if you find something wrong I guess. You feel like you've actually achieved something. Other wise I just spend a week walking round one half of a 160 acre site lol

Trouble is 90% of our MCC panels are IP2X - all of the 415v stuff is guarded - So you can't get any decent pictures through the perspex (you just see your reflection lol). That and a lot of the starter panels have non-defeatable isolators on.

We've got a couple... can't rememeber the exact price, but I think they were in the region of about £6k each.

 

[LegoHead]

So you guys use them for electrical panels then? We have never bothered using them before, but currently having problems with motors getting a bit hot so needed to explore the circuit boards.

It is only on loan, god knows how much they cost, but I want one for myself!

Will try and get pics of the women tomorrow.

 

[Leeshez]

Looks fun.

 

[Brown.]

What do you do at work that requires thermography ??

 

[Brown.]

So you guys use them for electrical panels then? We have never bothered using them before, but currently having problems with motors getting a bit hot so needed to explore the circuit boards.

It is only on loan, god knows how much they cost, but I want one for myself!

Will try and get pics of the women tomorrow.

hot motors ?? thermographic analysis of the board wont help one bit, clamp meter on the phases if any thing, hot motor causes:

inbalance in phase current
improper cooling
single phasing
bearing failure (will hear it though)

no board componants will cause hot motor, that will identifiabe by thermography

are the thermal o/l's comming in....??

 

[LegoHead]

So you guys use them for electrical panels then? We have never bothered using them before, but currently having problems with motors getting a bit hot so needed to explore the circuit boards.

It is only on loan, god knows how much they cost, but I want one for myself!

Will try and get pics of the women tomorrow.

hot motors ?? thermographic analysis of the board wont help one bit, clamp meter on the phases if any thing, hot motor causes:

inbalance in phase current
improper cooling
single phasing
bearing failure (will hear it though)

no board componants will cause hot motor, that will identifiabe by thermography

are the thermal o/l's comming in....??

Just a little background : We design brushless dc motors. The current one I am working on works at 20,000rpm 7Nm, roughly 15kw power output.

It's a 2 phase motor with a 16 IGBTs driven by 4 driver circuits to control the direction of current in each phase. Using the infrared camera we were able to identify an imbalance in temperature of the drive circuits that switch the IGBTs. The difference was between the forward and reverse drive circuits for each phase, indicating a possible dc offset.

We were also trying to see if we were reaching the thermal limits of any of the components on the board. Which we proved that we were no where near with the camera.

 

[Lagerlout]

So you guys use them for electrical panels then? We have never bothered using them before, but currently having problems with motors getting a bit hot so needed to explore the circuit boards.

It is only on loan, god knows how much they cost, but I want one for myself!

Will try and get pics of the women tomorrow.

Yeah, all our LV stuff is surveyed. All incoming supplies, distribution and MCC's are surveyed.

90% of it is loose connections in the starter panels (the old red spot fuse carriers are favourite lol).

We also look at motor temps, although all our bigger motors are fitted with thermistors (warning and shutdown).

 

[Clart]

g33k overload in this thread!!

 

[Brown.]

hot motors ?? thermographic analysis of the board wont help one bit, clamp meter on the phases if any thing, hot motor causes:

inbalance in phase current
improper cooling
single phasing
bearing failure (will hear it though)

no board componants will cause hot motor, that will identifiabe by thermography

are the thermal o/l's comming in....??

Just a little background : We design brushless dc motors. The current one I am working on works at 20,000rpm 7Nm, roughly 15kw power output.

It's a 2 phase motor with a 16 IGBTs driven by 4 driver circuits to control the direction of current in each phase. Using the infrared camera we were able to identify an imbalance in temperature of the drive circuits that switch the IGBTs. The difference was between the forward and reverse drive circuits for each phase, indicating a possible dc offset.

We were also trying to see if we were reaching the thermal limits of any of the components on the board. Which we proved that we were no where near with the camera.

My bad, was under the assumption you would be using 3 phase or at least a general purpose dc motor. whats your company called ?