It seems like real infrared application information as it relates to maintenance - is a scarce world resource.

Some of the leading manufacturers rarely put out any public information that does not relate to sales. (gotta feed those shareholders)

The thing that strikes me as the oddest - is that almost all anomolies discovered using IR are actually formally reported - creating a huge potential base of case studies.

What would it take to get some information flowing about real world IR Case studies?


Terry O

Not really true, there are a few very good conferences, most of which have the procedings available for purchase. There are also some very good books, most of which are readily available. Case studies are routinely given out to attendees on training courses, either on hardcopy or cd versions.

There is (in my opinion) just as much information available about Infrared as any other technology, whether it be NDT, R&D or PDM.

What type of information are you specifically talking about.

Buy the camera then buy the CD. Perhaps the same company that has benefitted so much from this market might want to actually contribute something without having thier hand in someones pocket. If we adopted their model for good citizenship - well never mind - I am off track.

No problem on CDs though as we also have conferences and sell CDs (although over time we also publish most of that same information on the web for free as well).

I am referring to the lack of (free) published "real world" case studies. Most trade magazines publish clap trap that was generated by IR Manufacturer's Press agents rather than by thermographers.

I am not sure if you have seen Uptime yet but it is really having to work to get good and current IR case studies. Feel free to email jshuler@uptimemagazine.com if you have some interesting case studies that you would like to see published.

Would love to have some links to some real "how to" stuff as I have not seen the same plethora of information as you have Bob.

Can you post some links please? We are most interested in maintenance applications.

Thanks
Terry O

I have been trying to get the IR community on this track for years. Last year I have even created a special section on my site especially for this called show and tell.

http://www.tdlir.com/show000.html

I do get many people visiting the site for the information, but not much actually want to contribute.

I can keep on adding to it, but the point is not for me to submit all the case studies alone. The point is for other thermographers to submit and share what they have learnt through real experiences.

Best Regards,

Ah, I missed the FREE part in your original post Terry.

I have seen Sonny's Show and Tell section on his website and I do think it is a very good concept.

Generally FREE information is not all that good and often contains many errors. I have over the years downloaded much information, some for free other times I had to pay for it. At this stage I cannot remember where I downloaded it from and what stuff was free or indeed is not available unless paid for due to copyright. But if people really want to find information, it is out there.

I would however strongly recommend
"Practical Applications of Thermal Sensing and Imaging Equipmant" by Herb Kaplan
"Common sense approach to thermal imaging" by Gerald C. Holst
And
"The Infrared Handbook" by Wolfe Zissis
Every thermographer should have a copy of these books, unfortunaltel they will have to pay for them
I would also recommend all the proceedings from Inframation, I have these on my laptop and bring them EVERYWHERE with me. There are also proceedings available from SPIE and Thermal Solutions. These can all be purchased, but are not very expensive in my opinion.

It is true that almost all anomolies discovered using IR are actually formally reported, but these are generally customer reports and sometimes they do not like information regarding their facilities published and occasionally even discussed. Most good thermographers do not have a lot of time available to compile information for others for FREE as they are usually busy people. I myself only do this occasionally as generally it goes to people or organisations that are going to make money from it from advertising or some other source. I usually only do this if there is going to be some quantifiable benifit to me or my business.

Dont get me wrong I have helped many people for free in the past, including many other thermographers with technical issues. I have also recieved quite a bit of technical help from other thermographers for free also. My customers also recive a periodic newsletter that I try not to fill with sales junk, but instead with information about various infrared applications that they may not be aware of. This is ONLY available to my customers, but I have written a number of specifications for insurance companies in the U.K. and Ireland, this I do for free and it should benifit everyone working in infrared.

Bob-

I will ignore the swat at FREE information as about 55,000 maintenance and reliability professionals seem to like the information we publish at Reliabilityweb.com and another 50,000 seem to like Uptime Magazine - the only magazine with regular monthly PdM coverage for IR applications.

I can get the New York Time and USA Today free online as well as the Wall Street Journal. That information is fantastic.

Free does not mean without value just as paid does not mean value. I could point to plenty of examples where IR customers paid for training, service, software or an IR System that did not deliver the value that was promised.

It is the suppliers best interest to have educted suppliers - but most of them - especially the big boys - want to control the information so they keep the good stuff in the vault. Too bad some do not understand the information economy yet.

As for being busy - when an industry feeds you -like othera areas that contribute to your life (schools, churches, community) it is a good idea to give something back. That seems to be a lost concept in today's hurry up and make a buck society.

Anyway - we digress - so on a more positive note - we are still seeking interesting case studies (company details can be removed) for publication if anyone is interested.

Thanks

Terry O

Right after I posted my reply above - I got an email newsletter from Electrophysics and there is a great article on NFPA 70E

Super job!

Terry O

My two main responsibilities are electric motors (includes vibration) and electrical equipment thermography.

For reasons I haven’t thought much about until now, I spend more time analysing vibration data, following up on predicitve findings during repair activities, and documenting results.

I would have to say the vibration problems tend to be much more complex both in terms of the variety of data available and the possible corrective actions that may be taken (not always straightforward to determine what repair is required). In contrast, there are typically only a few options available for repair of an electrica hotspot.

The vibration decisions tends to have fairly big impacts and sometimes are contentious. We argue what does 0.3ips really mean for this machine’s reliability (do we really need to fix it... and when does it need to be done). Sister machines might vary 0.1-0.2 ips.

In contrast, the thermography decisions usually are not as contentious. Any significant rise above sister phase above detection threshhold which can’t be explained by measurement or other factors is a clear anomaly. (vast majority of the balanced-current equipment has balanced temperature rise). (I know some cases are not quite that straightforward). Once we identify a problem, there is a clear understanding by plant customers that it is a defect which needs to be repaired.

In both cases we are sometimes asked to forecast the probability of failure of an identified defect if not repaired within a certain time. That is the toughest assignment in both cases. No matter how much we resist this question, our customers will try to form some opinion of the probability of failure as an input to their decision-making.

That is the aspect where having case studies illustrating temperature rise during scan vs later findings during disassembly inspection (discolored, high resistance etc) may have some value. Also would be very interesting to know about hot connections that actually progress to failure (I have not encounted a large number of those and don’t have much thermal history on the ones that did fail).

If I get the chance, I’d like to start collecting some of our thermography findings into case studies. Would like to see some from others as well.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: electricpete,

I believe there is another contributing factor to the lack of generally available thermographic case histories.

All of the camera manufacturers (FLIR, Mikron, Electrophysics, et al) maintain their data in proprietary data files, whose formats they do not publish. This makes it very difficult to transfer radiometric data from one thermography software to another. This in turn makes it difficult to publish case histories that can be looked at critically by other analysts.

The vibration world has taken a fair bit of criticism over the years for storing data in proprietary formats that can't easily be transferred from one system to another - it think its fair to say that the thermography world suffers from the exact same problem.

Steve

Hi guys,

I have one more comment on this!! As per my knowledge,there is no systematic approach in maintaining data in thermography. We are taking images and storing in a folder with a particular name and date. Retrieval of a past data is more difficult than finding a data from a vibration database. Also the memory consumption of thermal images are fairly big. This may tempt the users to clear old files and a comparitive study becomes difficult. (I don't know whether there is any new softwares available for dealing all this!!!).

And there is one more small factor affecting the availability of IR case studies. This i got from a discussion with some IR guys working all around. As per them, if a vibration data is collected, there may not be much criticism about the integrity of the data. But for IR images, there may be some comments about the way the images are taken. People can question on the image clarity and lot other factors. In fact, IR guys needs good skills for taking good images.

Just some wild thoughts...

Have a nice day!!

Dear All:

There are dozens of thermographic applications articles and hundreds of technical tips posted at IRINFO.ORG. Articles and Tips are written by experts from around the world and cover a broad range of thermographic applications as well as related NDT technologies.

Both Articles and Tips may be viewed online for FREE. Additionally, Articles may be downloaded in PDF format. No membership is required and all are welcome.

To view a list of Feature Articles, visit: http://www.irinfo.org/Articles/articles.html

To view a list of Tips of the Week, visit:

http://www.irinfo.org/tip_of_week_alphabeta.html

While at IRINFO.ORG, be sure to bookmark our site and visit often. Because our Feature Articles and Tips of the Week are updated monthly/weekly respectively, there is always something new.

Hope this is helpful.

Jim Seffrin, Publisher
IRINFO.ORG
425 Ellis Street
Burlington, NJ 08016
609-239-4788

www.irinfo.org