Thermography for MR DIY 12.26.2025

Starting Nov we were contracted with inspecting 120 stores.

The first 20 stores were inspected with Choy and myself and the other 40 by me and Bop.

Through our experience for each store we've continued to refine our techniques and data gathering.

Interesting Finds

This is one instance where we measured voltage drop across the poles of L2 where there was a severe thermal issue on the breaker. We measured approximately half a volt. After rectification, it dropped down to 120 mV, meaning it got better and the temperature dropped significantly.

Typically we usually measure around 20-50mV in a healthy pole, depending on the measured current. The higher the current, the higher the mV reading. Another fact is the bigger the breaker, the lower the mV due to the mass of the breaker and lower ohm value.

Here we found a thermal anomaly of 129degC on Line A. Severe condition due to double tapping a CT wire on the lug together with the conductor. This is actually the main culprit for many of our findings, apart from bad splicing.

So far there's been a handful of stores that have OL for ground, high leakage current, and issues with their AC system. Also have noticed that for those breakers that conditions didn't improve after termination rectification, the course of action is either to replace the breaker or something is occurring on the load side, whether ACUs or lights.

This requires more of an in-depth analysis of the store which is outside the scope of our work. It would be nice to find out what exactly are the root causes of these issues, since this would give us concrete data on any other facility with similar set ups.