Right on track
September 1st 2007 English Thermal Imaging specialists,
Thermoteknix Systems has
manufactured thermal imaging
cameras and systems for the past 25 years.
Its wide range of camera systems are used
in many fields including aerospace and
defense, police, surveillance, motor racing,
fire detection, R&D, Science, Cement and
other industrial applications. The
company's headquarters are in Cambridge,
England and Thermoteknix are represented
by agents worldwide.
Early in 2007, Thermoteknix' South
African distributor, Dynamic Instrumentation
headed by managing dircector Clive
Dignon, was approached by Metro Rail in
Pretoria who run the commuter rail
operations for all the major cities in South
Africa. Its maintenance division were
looking for a method to quickly scan its
overhead cables for hotspots. After
discussions with Metro, Clive came up with
the novel idea of using Thermoteknix' VisIR
Ti 200 infrared camera for Predictive
maintenance. The VisIR camera is a realtime,
hand-held thermal imaging camera
used primarily for monitoring industrial plant
equipment for hotspots, taking both infrared
and visible still images simultaneously, as
well as for scientific and R & D applications.
Metro's carriages are not set up for
technical surveys of this type so a
customised system using a standard pan/tilt
photography tripod and bracket was used
to mount the camera on the roof of the train.
The camera's real time image output signal
was converted from LVDS output into IP
Packets by a Pleora iPort GigE engine and
fed into a laptop over a CAT5 Ethernet link.
The data was captured and viewed using
Thermoteknix proprietary ThermaGRAM
product – a software program for real time
data IR data acquisition, viewing and
temperature analysis. The resulting data is
an impressive sequence of thermal images
showing the overhead cables in real time as
the train travelled along the track. This
survey system is designed to run overnight
while the railways are not in service. On the
first night of trialling the system, around
90km of track were surveyed with the train
running at around 30km per hour.
The trial identified hotspots on the
overhead cables requiring engineering
services to prevent electrical failure but just
as interestingly, quite a number of birds'
nests were also detected which could be a
safety hazard. In order to pinpoint the
precise location of the potential problem
hotspots, a GPS system was used with the
clock on the camera synchronized with the
GPS. Waypoints were marked wherever a
hotspot was recorded and the times were
used to marry up the image with the
waypoint. Metro Rail are delighted with
the initial results of the trial and are now in
discussions to introduce the system
throughout the rail network of South Africa. More articles from Thermoteknix Systems Ltd: | 
