Here is a short cut to compensate for colors or different types of materials. Most IR guns are set at 0.95 emissivity. Put a piece of black tape on anything, let it absorb the heat and measure the tape. Aluminum will really screw up the reading on an IR gun.
http://www.infrared-thermography.com/material-1.htm
OK, now down to specifics I didn't know about, so is that NAKED aluminum or painted aluminum?? and I see different paint listed, fine, but the temp of the surface is just that, no?? so I take that table percentage and that is the ACTUAL temp of what the gun says???
:huh2:
Without looking at the charts, I think that aluminum reflects around 67%. Painted materials are different. I think I saw a paint shortcut on that same website. Look at the difference between aluminum & SS. One would think it similar, but drastically different. I helped design a heat shield at the plant. I designed it to be aluminum when ordered. The machine shop used SS thinking it would work better. Anyway after installation we started cooking bearings. I started recieved quite a bit of heat with the bearing failures. I put some black tape on the shield and saw what was taking place. I checked with the machine shop to verify material used. I was told SS and that would not matter. After calling a meeting with the planners & machine shop they were shocked at what difference it would make, and said they would make new ones. Needless to say our problem went away.
This makes me think of Birds reference on making some heat shields in another thread for an exhaust shield. SS will only absorb more heat, but it will be better than nothing.
