Condition Red
January 1st 2005

To be launched at Maintec 2005 is Condition RED®, an innovative new asset management system from thermal imaging specialists Thermoteknix Systems.

Ian Clay travelled to the company’s Cambridge headquarters to get an exclusive first look

Vibration monitoring and thermography are well established condition monitoring disciplines.

However, with the introduction of Condition RED, Thermoteknix has brought thermal imaging closer to vibration monitoring in terms of its powerful monitoring, reporting, trending and analysis potential.

The process of conducting thermal imaging surveys and importing the data into software to produce reports is not a new one. However, Condition RED makes thermographic asset management easier, faster and more thorough by creating individual bespoke surveys via a new efficient and automated process so that inspection and report generation are achieved in a snap of the image and just a few clicks of the mouse.

If we look at the workflow of how an operator uses the Condition RED system, then the advantages over existing technology will become apparent. First the user must create an asset register on the PC. This asset register can be generated within Condition RED software, alternatively pre-defined asset lists can be imported from an existing source thanks to the use of the industry standard SQL server format.

Alistair Brown, sales manager at Thermoteknix says that the product can even be customised to interface with an existing CMMS.

Once an asset register has been created, the maintenance manager can then go about designing survey plans for assets to be inspected. For example, the manager could carry out a search in the Condition RED software for all the switchgear on a particular site that has not been inspected for three or more months, and to include all switchgear that has been serviced or repaired since the last inspection. This information including operating values, reference images and camera settings will be displayed in Condition RED on the PC and can then be exported directly to the camera by PC card or, wirelessly via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi for a particular survey. Camera settings for each asset are set automatically and a reference image is displayed on the camera screen at each survey point for comparison with the current operating status, leaving the operator with the sole task of focusing the camera and deciding on Condition Red, Yellow or Green. Functional or Operating status of each piece of equipment are identified and appropriate parameters are stored with the IR and Visual image in a single data file. On completion of the survey, the images and data are automatically transferred to the PC where they are imported into the database.

The system was designed for use with the Thermoteknix VisIR Ti 200 thermal imaging camera. As the VisIR name suggests this camera displays and automatically stores simultaneous thermal and visual images via a fully integrated Daybrite touch screen. VisIR has a Vanadium Oxide (VOX) highly sensitive, uncooled microbolometer detector in a cast aluminium case to withstand the rigours of harsh environments. With a 4- hour operation on a single charge of its Li- Ion battery and a range of single or multiple charger packs, VisIR was designed with prolonged field use in mind.

Thermoteknix’s Alistair Brown says that “The real advantages of the new software are best seen in a large plant or multi-plant organisation with many assets”. The preset survey plan guides the operator to where they should be in the plant through the existing touch screen interface on the VisIR camera. The camera then presents the operator with both text-based and image-based information relating to the asset to be inspected. A major advantage of Condition RED is that the system will lock the camera into a pre-set scale, range, palette etc (i.e. the camera settings which were used the last time a piece of equipment was surveyed) so that the images produced can be easily compared.

However, while it is practical to use pre-set surveys Thermoteknix has demonstrated its understanding of how maintenance departments actually work in real life and has therefore integrated an ‘Off-Survey’ function into Condition RED. This enables assets to be inspected at any time even if they do not appear on a specific survey. In a recent article (IPE Sept 2004) the importance of ‘Off Survey’ or ‘En-Spec’ reporting by maintenance technicians was highlighted at the Tencel plant in Grimsby.

Here, where the majority of the maintenance inspection routines are centred around vibration monitoring this type of reporting has become increasingly important as the maintenance department begins to take ownership of its plant.

Condition RED can also be used to record such variables as rotation/voltage/load with each inspection of an asset and this can be used by the user in allocating the asset’s condition to Green, Amber or Red. Data from other PM modalities such as vibration or acoustic analysis can be incorporated for each asset to give a multi-modality work up of the asset at any given time.

Once the operator has completed the survey, the data is then uploaded from the camera back into the database. It is from here that the maintenance manager can produce customised reports, trends, predicted time to failure charts, work lists, repair inspections or ‘Before and After’ repair reports very easily using the Microsoft Windows Word compatible package. The major advantage of the information that has been gained from the survey and the Condition RED software is that once the information is taken from the camera, historical trends are automatically generated, ensuring that equipment history can easily be compared and contrasted. This enables the maintenance department to easily demonstrate its cost savingeffectiveness and rationalise its ROI.

A feature of the VisIR Ti200 camera and Condition RED is the automatic display and recording of infrared and visual images on screen and in the database. Visual images of each asset are always taken simultaneously with the infrared image without operator or physical selection and both are saved in a single compound file to ensure that the visual and infrared image cannot be separated. This ensures that users will have long term reference to assets inspected essential when the infrared images of many assets tend to look similar to each other.

Condition RED is mainly aimed at those users with bigger sites containing large numbers of assets to inspect and manage. Alistair Brown believes that the product is also well suited for consultants as it markedly reduces the time spent collecting and analysing data post-survey.

As one consultant’s client has said ‘For every hour you spend with the camera you spend at least another hour analysing the data’. A major feature of this product is that it improves both the field inspection and the post-survey productivity with reduced time taken to produce simple or sophisticated reports and work schedules. Valuable, money saving measures.

Thermoteknix will be launching Condition RED at Maintec 2005. To explore the system’s capabilities for yourself then either contact Thermoteknix directly (details below) or make time to visit them at the exhibition. Stand B14.

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