How do you fix a problem you can't even
see? In smaller systems, it's not that hard. Air leak on your tire, just throw
some soapy water on it and find the bubbles. Easy. But in a larger system,
like our workshop's compressed air hoses, it could take a fluke to find a
tiny leak somewhere. A Fluke II 915
acoustic imager, to be exact. This
$25,000 handheld camera does not work like a
normal camera. You know, taking in light and transforming it into internet cloud.
Instead, it takes in sound and uses it
to find leaks and equipment malfunctions, even detecting noises
beyond the range of human hearing. It then represents that audio like a heat
map. So, let's see if we can use it to find some really useful stuff like the
leak in our system and maybe even a segue to our sponsor.
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Like so many of our videos, this one was prompted by an actual problems
that obviously it helps a little that we shoot most of our workshop videos on the
other side of this wall, but it's still been a major source of disruptions over
the last few years. Now, an obvious solution would be to just not have a
compressed air system, but that's not really an option. We use it for
everything from cleaning things off to
cutting and polishing to hacking things apart. Excuse me. And I've done a fair
bit of sand blasting with it, too. Mostly for my personal motorbike
project. So, okay, we need an air compressor. Deal with it, right? Well,
see, it wouldn't be that big of a problem. Except that somewhere in the
system is a leak. So, the compressor goes off way more often, disrupting us
way more often than it needs to. That's where Fluke's acoustic imager comes in.
Theoretically, with this, in a matter of minutes, I should be able to track down
the leak, saving us both time and money. Theoretically, I'm going to put that to
the test. I've never actually used this before, so I don't know how I'm going to tell the difference between our HVAC
system and air leaking out of a hose, but presumably, it's pretty easy. Wow,
there's something in this wall. Oh, there's something bouncing off this
wall. I think >> you'll get a lot of sounds reflecting
from that. Sometimes >> that makes sense. >> Keep an eye on the right side and you'll
see the range of frequency band that it's looking for.
>> Okay, I feel like I could move pretty quickly at this point. Oh, hello,
Captain. I think we've found something
right there. Okay, but would I even be able to hear this? Oh, I can. I would
have to be within like 10 inches of it though. One to go. And that took like
two minutes.
Oh jeez. Okay. Once you know what you're looking for, it stands out like a
beacon. Oh yeah, this one's a lot more obvious.
So between these two, this one was a pretty substantial one. We found both of
them within just a couple minutes. >> This is a lot like the video Adam Savage
did with this thing. Okay, two cool people can have the same cool idea at
the same time. Adam Savage and Electroboom and also me, just slower. I
want to show you guys separate from the video mode, you can put it in leak Q
mode. This allows you to take a picture
of a leak. Then according to your settings, so gas price, compression,
energy cost, as well as your currency, it will tell you how much that leak is
going to cost you here. I had no idea
that just a little air leak could cost $45 a year. So, replacing the fitting is
a no-brainer. That assumes it's running all year. I mean, it is running all
year. We never turn it off. Like, that's the whole thing with a leak. It's like a
faucet, right? Like a every once in a while drip will waste like more gallons
in a month than you could possibly fathom. Now, obviously, if the only
gases you're working with are compressed air, it would take a little while for an
investment like this to pay for itself. But in certain industries, this could be
worth its weight in gold in cost savings. Now, while the workshop team
gets those fittings sorted out, I'm going to go see what else this thing can do. The magic of this device is really
in its algorithm and precise calibration. The hardware itself is
pretty simple. This array of 64 microphones is arranged in a logarithmic
spiral to capture sound, and it uses beam forming to determine the source of
the sound. Then it overlays that on the camera image as what Fluke calls a sound
map. In the default mode, a sound map looks an awful lot like a heat map. All
of this is possible because the microphones are all in known locations
relative to both each other as well as to the camera right in the center. So
sound hits the array and with a little bit of maths, the source can be
determined by analyzing the reception delays. There are some limitations
though. Its microphones pick up sound between 2 kHz and 100 kHz, which is well
above the range of human hearing. So if you wanted to find something like a
small liquid leak, say in our water cooling loop here, the frequency of a of
a drip drip drip might actually be too low for the fluke to pick up.
Fortunately, we have an idea for that. Why not turn our liquid leak into
an air leak? All we need to do is pressurize our loop.
Well, that was easy. Oh, you put a hole in the tube. Usually the leaks are a lot
smaller than that in these water cooling systems. I kind of want to know if it
can handle a much smaller leak, like uh an, you know, an O-ring issue or
something. Every once in a while, especially on hardline fittings, these
O-rings will go missing and the system can look like it's all sealed up, but
and when that drip gets on the back of your GPU, h you're going to have a
pretty bad time. Put this up in the blue
zone. You can see even though there's no O-ring in there, it's sealed right now.
But let's see if our fluke can pick it up. Oh, dude.
Easy. And that is a much much smaller leak.
What a trouble saver that would be. Now, it is worth noting that our brilliant
strategy of just emptying the loop and pumping it up isn't going to work in
every situation. Clean rooms, for instance, need to maintain strict
control of airborne contaminants. And one of the ways that they do this is by
building them to be fairly airtight and to maintain positive pressure inside.
Not a ton of pressure cuz like humans need to work in there, uh, but some
pressure. So, how would they track down then a low pressure leak? Turns out the
answer is Fluke's Beacon. This little device emits sound at 40,000 hertz, well
beyond what would bother any human. You just pop it into your system, seal it
up, tune it to 40,000 hertz, and
theoretically, we should be able to find our leak. I can definitely detect it
through the acrylic now, but our system may be too complex for such a short
wavelength to travel through like that. It's probably just because this knows
there's sound coming from here or somewhere off the side and so it's not going to pick up the same frequency
somewhere else. >> Hold it up over there then. >> Oh, dude. Bingo.
>> You know what? This would be a great opportunity to check the multiple source
feature here. >> Ooh, yeah. So, in acoustics, we can
click multiple sources and then Oh,
dude, that's so cool. It'll show the different levels. However, those still
totally overpower it. >> Really? >> Yeah. that really doesn't care about
this leak unless it's the only one on screen. Very interesting. Wonder what
else we could use this for. A really cool application for acoustic imagers is
identifying problems with transmission towers at a distance, say from the
ground. It apparently works at up to 120 m or 393 ft and can be used to detect
partial discharge or arcing, the sort of thing that could lead to a forest fire.
Now, we don't have anything like that to test, but we do have some whiny
electronics like this GPU that has some coil wine. Now, coil wine isn't
dangerous like those transmission tower problems. It's just vibrations in board
components, specifically the coils, as electricity passes through. It's just it
can be pretty flipping annoying. Now, you can see that I'm not picking
anything up right now. That's because this GPU isn't under load. Let's just
plug in our keyboard using a handydandy spec cable from ltstore.com and fire up
a GPU inensive application. There it is.
But where is it coming from specifically? There's a hot spot right
where the 12vt 2x6 comes into the back of the board. Yep, it's right across the
back of the card where all the VRM would be. Doesn't really help us solve the
problem, but now we know. Actually, I had another situation very recently
where coil wine was driving me absolutely nuts. I use these USB fiber
optic docks in order to have my system downstairs, but my monitor and all of my
peripherals upstairs. I was hearing this like high-pitched almost like a CRT TV
in the next room whine. I was like, can anyone else hear that? Where's that coming from? And everyone's looking at
me like I'm crazy.
I'm having trouble getting it to go lower. >> Change the decibb from automatic to
manual. It's trouble though when you get into the low frequencies because if you
talk you can actually see it >> exactly when it's something that you can
hear like go wine it's always going to be in the frequency that we can hear so
it can be a little bit of trouble >> right at like 10,000 hertz. That's not
even that high pitch. Why couldn't anybody else hear this? It was driving me freaking nuts. Like can everyone can
hear 10,000 hertz, right? Some with hearing loss or significant age- related
hearing decline might struggle to detect it. >> So you shouldn't have had any problems. Listen. Listen. It's really cool how
adjusting the frequency band as well as the sensitivity can really help you dial
it in to detect particular things. Of course, your next question is probably,
"But what can I do about coil wine liners?" Some people have reported
success putting over these vibrating components, but your mileage, not to
mention your warranty, may vary. Is this
kind of analysis a practical application for such an expensive device? Yeah,
probably not. But there are more affordable options for this sort of
thing. The Fluke III500 is about $85,000
but is just limited to the leak Q functionality that we showed you guys
earlier with a more limited frequency band. Our II15 has some added functions
like mech, which detects things like a faulty bearing in an assembly line to
help identify and fix problems during planned downtime rather than when they
just come up unexpectedly. But if you want to go even cheaper, you totally
can. Other options are out there and there are even open- source acoustic
imagers. The Centenna, a modular system,
looks like a standout. Of course, that sort of thing means that the calibration
is entirely up to the user. If you're a business, well, you might not want to
deal with that. All right. Do you think they're done with the fixes in the shop? How'd all the fixes go? We're thinking
the regulator was leaking. It may have been the hose, but we swapped both out.
I wanted to replace the hoses anyway. The connection before was questionable
at best. Tore the regulator down, rebuilt it, and no leaks at all.
Sometimes you just have to take it apart and put it back together.
This one was a little bit different. I knew that there was a leak in here cuz this wasn't tight enough, but I
discovered that there was also an O-ring missing in her fasteners. Just
completely missing. >> Yeah. I was actually quite surprised
that it wasn't leaking worse than it was, but we ended up getting it put back
in and now it's good and tight. >> So, that was never in there.
>> No. This whole time? >> Yeah.
>> So, it was only the two leaks. That was it. Well, then what is this that I'm
picking up right now? I knew it. It's another segue to our
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If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the one we did on a Caterpillar branded smartphone that has
a Fleer thermal camera built into it. That was pretty cool.