I was dead wrong about those cheap thermal imaging cameras

Had a customer last month with a power supply that kept tripping the breaker on his CNC machine. I spent damn near 2 hours checking every diode and capacitor with my multimeter and couldn't find a thing. Was about to tell him it's haunted or something when my buddy brought over his $150 Seek thermal cam. Took one look at the board and saw a tiny voltage regulator cooking itself at 190 degrees that looked fine to the naked eye. 35 cent part fixed the whole thing. Has anyone else had a cheap tool totally change how you troubleshoot?

2 comments

2 Comments

shah.evan1d ago

Dude yes, same thing happened to me but with a different cheap tool. I had a weird issue with a treadmill motor controller board where it would run for 5 minutes then just die. Spent hours with the multimeter and my old scope and got nowhere. Finally grabbed my $40 USB thermal camera from Amazon and spotted a single little MOSFET heating up way hotter than its neighbor. Replaced it and the thing works perfect now. Cant believe I used to stare at boards for hours when a heat signature tells you everything in 30 seconds. These cheap thermal cams are a total game changer for finding those invisible failures.

logansullivan1d agoRising Star

You mentioned "cant believe I used to stare at boards for hours" and honestly that was me too. I was one of those guys who thought thermal cameras were overpriced toys for pros only. Then I got a cheap one on a whim and it totally changed how I look at electronics repair. I used to spend forever probing around with my multimeter guessing where the problem was. Now I just power something up and look for the hot spot. It feels almost like cheating when you find a bad component in 30 seconds flat. I was wrong about them being useless and I'm happy to admit that.