Waved off the thermal camera as a $250 toy, then it found a 3-cell short in 8 minutes

Michael Grant · 2026-10-26T13:15:04.237874+00:00

I always figured a thermal camera was a gadget for the tool catalog, not something a real bench tech needed. Then last month a Dell laptop came in with a battery draining overnight and I spent 90 minutes pulling it apart with a multimeter before my coworker handed me his FLIR One and said just look at the board. The shorted cell lit up like a candle in about 8 minutes, right under the RAM shield where I never would have probed. Now I use it on every no-power ticket, and I'm kicking myself for the hours I burned guessing. What tool did you write off as a gimmick and then end up using daily?

Free To Speak

Loading…

Waved off the thermal camera as a $250 toy, then it found a 3-cell short in 8 minutes | Computer Technicians - Free To Speak