The Snap On guy came around the other day with a new toy to peddle. I was out and about in the field, but he got his hooks into the boss trying to sell him on a new thermal imager for $1200. He was pitching that you can use it to find bearings going south, misfires (finding a cold exhaust manifold runner) and short circuits in wiring. I have no doubt it will do all of those things. My question is, is it worth $1200?! I have a nice Klein infrared thermometer that I can do all of those things, but maybe not as far or as graphically. It seems to me that there are A LOT of other things the shop could spend $1200 on, if the money just has to be spent... Opinions?
I wonder if because Snap-On sells it for $1200 if that means you could find a comparable one elsewhere for $400....
Wonder how long before some one like Harbor Freight offers them? I forget what the infrared gun we had at the shop cost but as it was from Cat I know it was not cheap! And now here is one from Harbor Freight: https://www.harborfreight.com/non-contact-infrared-thermometer-with-laser-targeting-60725.html For under $30.00!
I do pretty much everything he's "peddling" with a good Fluke infrared thermometer. $69. A fancy one with colors on a screen does me no good as I'm colorblind . I can't see it being worth that. In our world hot is hot and cold is cold. Idk how often we'd need to see the differences represented on a screen like we're watching the weather channel. Junkyard
For that price you could probably score the new phone CAT is peddling. It has all the thermal imaging built into its camera. I believe it's loaded with some other handy applications as well. For what it is, I guess it's cool. I'm just anti-CAT
The big thing is the resolution, sensitivity, and the spectrum. "I know someone" who takes the cheap FLIR model and changes the software to the "$3000" model. Works really good for the price. But there's a lot of profit in these and it is only a matter of time before harbor freight sells them
Actually, MSRP is much less than snappy's price. I'm not pushing or recommending, just letting folks know. http://www.catphones.com/en-us
That's a bada$$ little unit. Next time one of my kiddos needs a phone they might get mine and I'll get one those ;-)
Or you can buy one of these and not have to pay the price for the Cat phone or be locked up with their programing. http://www.ebay.com/itm/301873076205?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
Where I could see one of these being useful is exhaust ports on a cold engine, start it up, view the entire exhaust manifold at once and watch over the first 30 seconds or so as it heats up to see if one runner does not heat up right away with the others. Of course it has to be done quick before the hot gases heat the whole chunk to hot. It seems to me that if you are pointing an IR thermometer around during this short opportunity you might miss the magic spot or get inconclusive results, with a camera you get the "big picture". And for those color blind, I am sure the display could be black and white, white=hot and black=cold.
The Apple Store is selling a FLIR plug in for iPhones and ipad at about $350 can. I have played with it a bit and for the price, I believe good value. The more expensive cameras give better resolution. Our 60k unit can "see" the pins in the arm you broke at one time. For finding a hot Bearing of bad electrical connection, $350 will serve most people. Cam
I've used one of these a few times. Price has dropped almost enough for me to pick one up. Was going for ~$500 18 months ago. http://a.co/22X3GEp
I have one of the SEEK IR units for my android like Ben Witter mentioned above and for the sub 200 dollar price you can't beat it but it will drain the phones battery quick if you use it a lot. I also have some of the FLIR units with much higher resolution but at a lot more cost... while they work great for just about anything you can think of like Camshawn says just for finding a hot bearing or certain electrical troubleshooting you can get away with less resolution and still make do... of course a regular IR gun with laser dot can also work it's just a matter of speed and convenience where a thermal picture is worth a thousand words of time saved Have also used them for seeing how full tanks are, finding liquid flowing in pipes, helping people 'see' where they need more insulation in buildings and just about anything else where subtle temperature differences can tell a story and you don't have to be anywhere close to the area in question. A lot of the newer offering of 'IR camera devices' you see out there lately all use the same FLIR 'Lepton' imager chip which is a fairly low resolution I think 60X80 or something like that... so to play with numbers to increase sales they do what I like to call 'cheating the specs' this is where they take a regular camera with higher resolution in the same device and mix the two pictures (regular and thermal) into one composite image and then show you a very good looking image showing the hot spots with plenty of detail!!!
We used the Flir to find hot spots in industrial hydraulic systems. It is a real time saver.
The Snap-On model is just okay I would say. I've used it and also Milwaukee's thermal imager and the Milwaukee has far better clarity, it's faster, not laggy video feed and way higher resolution than the Snap-On. As far as imagers go, they are handy and have their place. But I tend to just go for the laser temp gun first. For exhaust manifolds it will show a dead cylinder even after running for an hour. The one runner will show enough of a difference to display on the screen We've also uses it diagnosing hydraulic issues, it can reveal restrictions sometimes or even show blockage in a cooler. I would consider buying one myself one day. But never off the Kool-aid truck, and hopefully by then they become more mainstream and affordable.