On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:14:31 -0500, Jim Yanik
wrote:

They now make "fairly low cost" handheld IR scopes for firefighting use;
I saw one demonstrated on the local TV news,and it was sensitive enough to
see a 3-sec handprint on a wall. It could easily show up hot components on
a PCB.It was the size of a handheld portable spotlight. It might be
worthwhile reaserching,particularly if one has a small production business.

FLIR makes these:
http://www.flir.com
Their lowest cost model is about $1000. Office next door does home
energy assessments and has one of these.
http://www.flir.com/thermography/americas/us/content/?id=24072
However, they won't let me borrow it any more after it got trashed by
someone else. While I had it, it was wonderful for finding shorted
power supply traces, overheating components, and CPU cooling problems.
I don't see myself spending $1000 for one in the near future.

However, I have built several IR flying spot scanners, that might
suffice. Basically just a far infrared photo detector chip, a
rotating mirror ripped out of a laser printer or supermarket scanner,
and some optics. I've built several of these over the years, with
assorted problems. All of them worked, but the response time was
awful compared to the various FLIR arrays. Thermal noise was also
bad.
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.equipment/browse_thread/thread/92c3879a53a8f9f1

The problem was that the caps really did not get warm. Per comments
by Phil Allison, little heat is not required to produce the gasses
that a bulging the case. I don't think the FLIR camera will show
anything useful.



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