WANT TO KNOW THE ACTUAL OPERATING TEMPERATURE OF YOUR GEAR?

I wanted to let everyone know that I will be bringing an infra-red digital temperature gun (fancy thermometer) with me to Carverfest. It has a laser sight dot that shows the exact location where it is taking the temp reading, and it's accurate to within one degree. I use it at the race track to check & monitor the operating temperatures of the brake rotors and tires. I thought it would come in handy for anyone who wants to know what the actual operating temperatures are for any of their gear. I am curious to see how even the tube temperatures are on all of the super cool tube gear we will have the privilege of enjoying at Carverfest. So if any of you would like to use it you are more than welcome to do so.....

Rainman

I have one of those I use on my vehicles; I was once able to get my Sunfire amp up to 131 degrees (surface temp on top right side) running HAAAAAAAAAAAAARD for about an hour into AL-IIIs....

That sounds like fun. See how hot you can get your amp.

Almost as fun as those blood alcohal testers they had in bars for a while. People would drink more to see how high they could get it.

[DaveS]

So what you are sayin` is Now we will know exactly what temp. we are grilling our steaks at over the 9s. I can hear Ray yelling, "Turn the volumn down you`er burning the steaks"!!!!!!!!!!!

He, he,, my brother uses one to check the temperature of the peanut oil when deep frying.

He, he,, my brother uses one to check the temperature of the peanut oil when deep frying.

I will mention that idea to my clown troupe I think they usually check the temp of the oil by just tossing the turkey in and if it explodes then something was not right...
(you would really enjoy meeting the guys I work with) Rainwoman can attest that the phrase "It's all games and really funny until someone gets hurt..... then it's funnier!) is more of a motto than a phrase over here.

Rainman

He, he,, my brother uses one to check the temperature of the peanut oil when deep frying.

I will mention that idea to my clown troupe I think they usually check the temp of the oil by just tossing the turkey in and if it explodes then something was not right...
(you would really enjoy meeting the guys I work with) Rainwoman can attest that the phrase "It's all games and really funny until someone gets hurt..... then it's funnier!) is more of a motto than a phrase over here.

Rainman

LOL,, sounds just exactly like my brother,,he owns his own business,,Imported Auto Repair,,although with this economy,I see a variety of cars.Yep,, he loves the "point and shoot" thermometer,,,and yep,, we've exploded a few birds,,I'm sitting here laughing about it right now.

Keep in mind that when using an infrared (IR) thermometer, regardless of the manufacturer, model, etc., that the technology has built-in limitation: it is impossible to get an accurate temperature reading (with errors possible between 0 and 100%) unless the emissivity of the surface being measured is known. See definition of emissivity here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissivity

As you can see in the example on Wikipedia, highly polished silver has an emissivity of ~0.02. In other words, if a piece of this material was actually at 100 ­°F, the temperature as measured with an IR thermometer would indicate a temperature of 2 °F. True, this is a gross example, but gives you an idea of the impact that emissivity has on the accuracy of the measurement. Moreover, because it is virtually impossible to know the emissivity of a random object (special blackbody sources, whose emissivity is known, are used to calibrate IR thermometers), the USAF limits the use of IR thermometers to relative measurements only, due to the aforementioned impact emissivity has on measurement accuracy.

A way to determine the emissivity of a material is to first measure it with a high quality contact thermometer (PRT or RTD type; thermocouples have an inherent accuracy of only about ±2 °F), then measure it with a calibrated IR thermometer. The emissivity is the ratio between the actual temperature (measured by the contact thermometer) and the IR reading. For example, if the contact thermometer measures an actual temperature of 100 °F and the IR thermometer measures it as 95 °F, the emissivity is 0.95, roughly speaking.

With all that being said, the black cases on Lightstar equipment likely has an emissivity relatively close to 1, perhaps in the 0.95 range, where the more grey cases of traditional Carver equipment is probably closer to 0.9 or so. Check the IR thermometer's manual for more information on emissivity.

Hope this is of interest...

That does have value in this application for sure, however this particular unit is capable of giving a fairly accurate reading of the air temp right down to a whisker away from the surface that is your heat/cold source without reading the actual surface. That is a good way to somewhat verify how close it's reading the actual surface temp.
I guess I can also bring my digital tire temp probe along as well for a more accurate second reading on stuff. The probe temp reads in increments of 1/10th of a degree. I know that thing is really accurate because it repeats a temp reading right down to that 1/10th of a degree on anything that is a constant heat or cool source, not to mention for what the price tag is on the thing it should probably do a lot more than just read temps for you if you know what I mean

Rainman