Using IR to find bad connections (1 Viewer)

[e9999]

So, I'm playing with a new Lithium battery, testing, checking the charging and discharging characteristics. I have a bunch of meters on there and there is an odd anomaly with current variations.
Long story short: I noticed that when moving the wiring around a Powerpole the current would change suddenly. So I'm thinking of course there is something going on with that PP, like a bad contact. But it's not warm. And the current vagaries seem random. Plug and unplug various powerpoles. No difference.
So I decide I'll pull out the IR camera to see which one is bad. Did that. Well, none of them look bad. Sure they are a bit warm but nothing dramatic. Until...

I finally check the power supply end of things. I'm going from my usual Powerpole connections to banana plugs for the power supply connection. I take a look at that end and:

Yup. The RHS one has a bad contact inside and is heating up. Note these are OEM plugs, not my DIY ones so I was not expecting that. If I touch them, sure enough one is a bit warmer. Not dramatic but noticeable.
So, I replaced the plug. Immediately, the voltage drop across my system went down significantly, and the current went up. So must be that when wiggling the wiring somewhere else it did in fact also move things ever so slightly at that plug which must have affected the poor connection, and that was enough to mess things up.

Goes to show ya...!

 

[LandLocked93]

Nice work.
Is this IR or thermal?
Guessing the camera has IR emmitters?

 

[george_tlc]

Thermal imaging sensor. Heat is long IR and not the type of IR that comes from IR LEDs etc.

FLIR is one manufacturer of thermal camera technology. It's not cheap technology, but if one can afford/justify a thermal camera, they really are incredibly useful for fault finding and general debug/analysis.

I have a FLIR E4 'modified' to higher resolution and it is quite magic for electronic design work to do thermal evaluations of designs.

Here's an example of measuring component temperatures of a 45W LED driver design. The board is approx 1.3" square as a size reference.

cheers,
george.

 

[dmjay]

I use thermal imaging cameras all the time for this.
Great diagnostic tool.