It’s no secret that infrared can be used to diagnose problems with electric motors in industry, but residential applications? As ITC Instructor Ron Lucier recently discovered, possibilities exist at home as well, this one involving his pool pump motor:
Returning from a recent Level III class in Nashua I heard an awful noise in my backyard when I stepped out of my car. Pretty quickly I determined it was my pool pump motor (1 horsepower). What a racket. Sounded like just a bearing so I brought out my trusty vibration acceleration detector: a screwdriver. Measuring at each bearing of the motor and the pump I didn’t feel very much. However, I noticed a black spot on the side of the gold painted motor. It was time to get out the IR camera: my brand new FLIR T650sc.
I would find out the next day that the long wave emissivity for this paint is 0.91 so making the correction the hot spot was about 201 F! Good thing that I didn’t try to touch it!
