Using a Thermal Gun / Infrared Thermometer for electronics

I believe you can keep the fluff out of the line of sight using mental floss!

There was a quote from the Goon Show that Eccles (IIRC) didn't have a light in his eyes - it was the sun shining through the back of his head...

Mike.

I've seen a lot of those little smd film caps short recently on TV mains an d tcons. I don't have an imager, but I give the circuit board a dose of fr eeze spray, feed in a limited current to the shorted line, and see where th e white frost blanket thaws first. With any luck, it's the actual componen t that thaws first. Problems arise when the offending shorted is close to zero ohms and some feeding component gets hot.

That's why it took me so long to find that one. It was absolutely, positively zero ohms. It shut down the power supply instantly. I had to tap into the correct branch of the power distribution and apply current there to generate any heat.