How Exergen products are part of your everyday life - take a sensor journey with Exergen Global

Exergen Global: You may not be aware of it, but Exergen’s thermal sensors play a role in your everyday life – in some surprising ways! With that in mind, the team at Exergen Global wants to invite you to join us as we “walk you through” a typical day and point out the myriad and diverse ways Exergen sensors are present in nearly everything you do or touch! I hope you’ll join us on our “sensor journey”.

Wake me up and measure!

If you’re like the Exergen Global team members, first thing in the morning when you wake up, you fire up the coffee machine, warm up the shower, warm up your car, and check the local weather to determine what to wear. You’ve been awake perhaps twenty minutes, you haven’t even left the house, and yet you’ve already encountered sensors measuring the temperature nearly half a dozen times.

As you dress for the day, you realize that the shirt you put on was manufactured at a textile mill that uses a thermal drying process, controlled in part by sensors. As you’re preparing breakfast, you may put some cold milk -- which is pasteurized via a thermal process using an IRt/c -- in your cereal. By the way, your cereal was also processed using a drying process managed by sensors.

Temperature Measurement on the Go and in the office

You finally hit the road in your car that just came back from the body shop where the quarter panel was painted using an infrared curing process that employs an IRt/c sensor. Unfortunately you hit some heavy traffic that’s caused by a road crew patching a pothole – they’re using asphalt that is heated and measured with an IRt/c. Since you’re low on cash, you stop at the ATM, which is tied into a data center that uses multiple IRt/c’s to constantly monitor the electrical system and prevent any down time (and thus lost money for the bank). When you arrive at the office, you turn on your PC. The microprocessor inside it was thermally bonded using a machine that has an IRt/c in it.

Who Knew THESE Things Needed Thermal Management?

You’ve been feeling very tired lately, so after checking a few emails, you make an appointment at the lab around the corner where they take some blood. Fortunately, the lab uses IRt/c sensors for all of its diagnostics equipment to ensure that the temperature of fluids being tested remains in a safe range. If they were using contact sensors, rather than I/R sensors, the blood and other body fluids could easily become contaminated from contact with the device.

While you’re sitting at the physician’s office waiting for the results of your blood work, you begin thinking about the new home you’re having built. It’s been a tedious process but finally the walls are up and the cement floors have been poured. You probably never thought about the crucial role that temperature sensors play in making cement. The material can neither be too hard, nor too soft.

Dining, Driving, Daydreaming – Sensors are There Too!

It is lunch time and you hit the local café and order a turkey club sandwich. Little did you know that the temperature of the eggs that hatched into baby turkeys (and eventually became part of your sandwich) were measured using Exergen handheld, precision thermometers. The bread used in your sandwich is processed using a dough mixing machine that has an IRt/c in it and the lettuce was grown on a farm that uses IRt/c’s for irrigation control. You pay for your sandwich with a twenty-dollar-bill that was printed on a press with a web drying unit that uses IRt/c’s.

As you walk back to the office after your lunch, you see a trailer hauling a race car. You’ve watched Nascar races on TV and know that the cars often have tire blowouts. But did you know that IRt/c’s are used to monitor the temperature of race car tires to help avoid those blowouts and increase performance? Once you’re back at your desk, you log onto your computer -- the plastic mouse attached to your PC was molded with an IRt/c monitoring the injection molding machine. As the day goes on you begin to daydream, staring out the window adjacent to your desk. The window glass was processed using an IRt/c to monitor its temperature that meet hospital regulations. A sensor solution must be chosen that can withstand the corrosive properties of harsh detergents.

Which Used Sensors First? The Chicken? Or.. the Spaceship?

You have to stop at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few things. You grab a 12-pack of your favorite beverage and some diapers for the baby. It turns out that the adhesive holding the packages together thanks to the Infrared Thermal Inspection of the Exergen SnakeEye thermal switch. You also pick up a package of cigarettes (which you planned on quitting years ago), and realize, using an IRt/c, that the tobacco has dried out. You’re just about done in the store when your wife calls to say that your baby has a fever, so you grab an Exergen TemporalScanner thermometer. When you get home, you’re starving, so you pull a piece of chicken out of the freezer. Before it was shipped to the grocery, the chicken temperature was checked at the factory, using IRt/c’s to ensure the product was not contaminated. As you wait for your chicken to cook, you grab a bag of potato chips that was baked using IRt/c’s in the process. After dinner you take an aspirin from a bottle that was sealed using an Exergen SnakeEye Thermal Switch, and then turn on the television to relax for a while!

You’re lucky enough to tune in just in time to see NASA launch a space shuttle. The shuttle is using IRt/c sensors to measure equipment temperature. The unpowered sensors are the ideal choice to go to the moon since they never require service – after all, it would be really tough to send a service person up in space to replace a sensor because it has ran out of power.

That brings us to the close of the day! You’ve had quite the “sensor journey” with the Exergen Global team and learned a ton about how sensors play a big role in our everyday life. You deserve some rest... good night! (and don’t forget to turn on your electric blanket, that’s controlled by – GUESS WHAT?)