In industrial facilities, maintenance is essential. It helps keep companies running smoothly by ensuring their machinery and equipment operates correctly, efficiently, and safely. It also reduces downtime and repair costs among other benefits. While preventative maintenance can go a long way toward keeping a facility up and running, predictive maintenance is equally important. It allows businesses to find potential malfunctions and other problems in advance so they can address them before they get out of hand.
Infrared thermography is an important part of predictive maintenance. It involves using a thermal imaging camera to detect hot spots in electrical systems and equipment. Those areas of excess heat can be indications of problems to come. An infrared thermography inspection can enable businesses to pinpoint hot spots. From there, they can further assess them, determine what’s causing them, and resolve them before they cause breakdowns, system failures, fires, or other serious issues. This technique plays several roles in predictive maintenance.
Non-Invasive Inspections
For one, infrared thermography is a non-invasive technique. It allows businesses to check their wiring, equipment, electrical panels, and additional components without touching them. That greatly reduces the potential dangers of performing inspections without forcing companies to sacrificing thoroughness or effectiveness. At the same time, it doesn’t require power to be shut off, and the equipment being checked doesn’t need to be shut down or dismantled. As such, technicians can use infrared thermography without causing unnecessary downtime.
Flexibility
Infrared thermography is also a highly flexible tool for predictive maintenance. It can detect a long list of problems. Those include faulty connections and damaged wires in electrical equipment and systems as well as overloaded circuit breakers. It can also show signs of damaged or insufficient insulation in electrical wiring and components and find problems with transformers or switchgears.
In certain cases, infrared thermography can show technicians when circuit breakers may be on the verge of malfunctioning as well. Circuit breakers are crucial for preventing electrical overloads and power surges that can cause major damage to electrical systems, machinery, and electronics. Those are only a few of the potential malfunctions and safety hazards infrared thermography can be used to find.
Improving Efficiency
Furthermore, infrared thermography can aid in improving efficiency. It can be used to find areas where unnecessary energy is being used. Those might include corroded terminals, imbalanced electrical loads, poor connections in distribution panels, and a variety of other issues that cause energy waste. Finding those problems and resolving them can help companies save money in several ways, not the least of which are lower energy bills and less wear and tear on equipment and machinery.
Improving Safety
As part of an inclusive maintenance strategy, infrared thermography can improve safety in industrial facilities as well.
It allows businesses to find and eliminate shock and electrocution hazards. It also points out certain potential electrical fire hazards so companies can address them before they actually cause serious problems. Detecting those problems early on can prevent injuries as well as significant losses.
Improving Predictive Maintenance Strategies With Infrared Thermography
Predictive maintenance can go a long way toward preventing malfunctions, reducing safety hazards, and improving efficiency among other benefits. Infrared thermography is an integral component of predictive maintenance. It’s a flexible, non-invasive, and highly effective method for detecting potential electrical issues before they cause extensive damage. It can help businesses save money in several ways from preventing downtime and employee injuries to reducing energy use and extending the lifespan of machinery.
