Pro tip: Switched to a thermal imaging gun for LRU fault checks last month

Used to poke around with a multimeter for hours chasing intermittent shorts. Got tired of the dance, bought a Flir for $350. Found a bad power supply module on a 737 in under 10 minutes. The heat signature just lit up the bad solder joint. Now I scan everything first before breaking out the probes. You guys use thermal tools or still stick to old school methods?

3 comments

3 Comments

tylerj2210d ago

Yeah that tool pays for itself real quick when you're tracking down gremlins like that.

taylor1210d ago

Man, I feel you on that. Dropped $400 on a thermal cam last year after chasing a ghost short on an A320 for three days straight, and it paid for itself in the first week. Nothing beats that feeling of spotting a hot chip in 30 seconds instead of poking around blind for hours.

lily7010d ago

Hold up though, thermal cams are great for finding hot spots but people sleep on the cold side of that equation. Had a situation where a board had a dead short that wasn't getting hot at all because the current was just sitting there doing nothing. Popped the thermal cam on it and saw a chilly capacitor that was supposed to be warm. Turns out the short was upstream starving everything downstream. Sometimes you gotta look for the parts that aren't doing their job instead of just the ones overheating.