FLIR Systems has published the ’Cooled versus Uncooled Thermal Imaging’ technical note in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Russian.
For many years, thermal imaging cameras have been used by scientists, researchers and R&D specialists for a wide range of applications, including industrial R&D, academic research, non-destructive and materials testing as well as defence and aerospace.
But it is not always clear which applications are best suited to cooled and which will work better with uncooled systems.
The authors of the technical note discuss how uncooled thermal cameras are generally much less expensive than cooled cameras and - with fewer moving parts - tend to have much longer service lives than cooled cameras under similar operating conditions.
However, not all thermal cameras offer the same capabilities, and for some applications the inherent performance advantages of a cooled detector are beneficial.
Performance advantages are explained in the note, alongside application examples of how a cooled imaging camera could be the instrument of choice for users who need to see minute temperature differences, want the best image quality, have fast moving or heating targets, need to see the thermal profile or measure the temperature of a very small target, who want to visualise thermal objects in a very specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum, or want to synchronise the thermal imaging camera with other measuring devices.
