Using Thermographic Testing To Reduce Business Risk

13 February 2018
 Categories: Business, Blog

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As a business that provides a product or service, it makes sense to take every precaution you can to reduce risk. Initial and continuous testing is part of the process of reducing that risk. Here is the role thermographic testing should play in this. 

What Is Thermographic Testing?

In thermographic testing, infrared radiation is coded and evaluated to determine the thermal features of a product. Heat radiation is always present on any object, and it can be measured by scientists, either as a thermal image or as a quantified temperature value. 

How Is It Done

Sometimes, an infrared camera is all that's needed to do thermographic testing. Scientists may take additional measurements to more carefully quantify areas of heat that show up as unusual or interesting on the images. 

What Does it Tell You?

Once you have this information, thermographic testing can tell you a lot of things. For instance, it can tell you when there are weak connections between parts of a device, product, or tool. Those are potential snapping points that would cause the product to malfunction and potentially injure someone.

Another use case for thermographic testing is to tell when there are unbalanced loads within a process. For that type of testing, a series of images or videos may be evaluated to determine where weight is shifting; this kind of information can't always be determined by the naked eye when a process is in motion. It can help make a process safer, reduce wear on equipment, and produce a better product in the end. 

With electrical components, excess heat can be a huge hazard. This is a case where thermographic testing is required for safety evaluation, to ensure that the electrical system is performing correctly and discharging heat in a reasonable way. 

Deteriorated insulation can also be detected with thermographic testing. The areas where insulation are missing will show heat escaping from the surface of the object. With any of these tests, updates to the product are generally made, and then additional thermographic testing is done. 

All of these safety evaluations are obviously valuable to a business. With any risk, the steps you can reasonably take to prevent it should correlate to the severity of potential losses and the likelihood of those losses happening. For its cost, thermographic testing is an inexpensive way to rule out certain product or process defects that could cause significant damage and losses. Thus, it is recommended wherever possible. Contact a company, like infrared consulting services inc, for more help.