Fluke TiR32 Building Diagnostics Thermal Imager
Oct. 9, 2009 — The name of the company may be the Fluke Corporation, but the more than 60-year-old, multinational film's prominence in the industrial equipment-testing field is no mistake. Hey, founder John Fluke Sr.'s roommate when he was starting out was David Packard, future co-founder of Hewlett-Packard. These guys knew a little something about this stuff.
And so can you. As every board knows, periodic testing of your building's physical plant is an important responsibility. (And if you don't know it, check out "Structural Tests Can Save Money — and Lives"). You can hire an engineer to run tests every so often, but for day-to-day upkeep of building parts, consider letting your super play with an infrared, thermal-imaging camera like this new model. Besides, it's a handheld, infrared thermal-imaging camera. How cool is that??!
OK, so what can you use a thermal-imaging camera for? Well, saving on energy costs by detecting where unwanted air is entering or exiting your building (see image above); extending the life of your roof by identifying where spot repairs are needed (see image, below right); detecting overly hot belts inside elevator or other motors; or spotting where in-ceiling insulation has gotten saturated by water leaks and hangs heavily until, heaven forbid, it falls right off, taking brick and mortar with it.
The 2.3-pound camera (views at left) has a full-color, 3.7-inch (diagonally measured) screen with a high 320x240-pixel resolution. Its 2 GB SD memory storage card automatically captures both infrared and visible images, as well as voice annotations, doing away with the need for pen-and-paper notes. It has an easy-to-learn, three-button menu that you can navigate with the push of a thumb, plus what the company claims is industry-leading noise-equivalent temperature-difference (NETD), a measure of the sensitivity of thermal-radiation detectors.It's powered via an AC power supply and two rechargeable lithium ion batteries.
You can go here for a 360-degree online "virtual demo," or here for a PDF brochure. It's not cheap — it retails for just under $9,000 from a variety of online retailers. However, it's been engineered to withstand a six-and-a-half-foot drop, is warranted for two years, and the company offers product demonstrations. And in a particularly nice touch, the TiR32 supports a variety of languages including Spanish, Polish, Czech, Russian and both simplified and traditional Chinese. Ah, if it only did Albanian, too, then it'd really be a New York product!
Fluke Corporation • 6920 Seaway Boulevard, Everett, Wash. 98203 • (425) 347-6100 • toll-free (800) 760-4523 • E-mail contact form here