Why Battery Life Matters with Digital Thermometers & Temperature Calibrators

Have you ever had to walk to another building to perform a routine thermocouple validation as part of a PMS schedule? Or driven to a field site to monitor the temperature of a bonding process? Or set-up to run a week-long heat cycle test? In my career I have done these activities, and I am sure many of my fellow engineers, meteorologists, field service personnel, and technicians have also had to do all these tasks. When you are in the field, you need digital instruments that are reliable, and this includes the batteries that power your devices. One of the first things you learn is that portable instruments eat batteries. So, you are always thinking…

“DO I HAVE ENOUGH BATTERIES TO GET THE JOB DONE? (And a screwdriver to change them.)”

Things have gotten so bad with battery usage that many thermometer brands advertise as one of their key features that one does not need a screwdriver to change the batteries!

We at Advanced Energy's TEGAM have taken a different direction. We view battery life as a Quality and Reliability feature and have done some advanced R&D and engineering to give our new digital temperature calibrators approximately 10x the battery life of most competing brands. Our 940 Series Thermocouple Temperature Calibrators operate for 500 hours on 3 AA Batteries. That’s 62 eight-hour days, or four hours a day for 26 weeks before you have to change the batteries.

To TEGAM engineers, that equals Reliability! For our customers in manufacturing, production and research, it equals User Confidence that the digital thermometer or temperature calibrator will work when it is needed. A great side benefit is that reduced thermometer battery consumption drastically cuts down on the number of batteries that wind-up in landfills where they can seep into water tables and cause pollution. It also greatly reduces the total cost of ownership over the instrument’s life duration.

Here’s a common example of what we mean:

Use: 1000 hours – 4 hours a day for 250 days in a business year.

TEGAM: 500 hours on 3 AA batteries = 2 sets of batteries = 6 total thermometer batteries.

Cost $0.90 ea. x 6 = $5.40

Theirs: 40 hours on 4 AA batteries = 25 sets of batteries = 100 total thermometer batteries.

Cost $0.90 ea. x 100 = $90.00

That’s an $84.60 savings per year.

This is also 94 less thermometer batteries per digital thermometry unit in a landfill!

To sum it up, at TEGAM we view battery life and battery consumption as part of a measuring instrument’s overall Quality, Reliability, Convenience, Cost, and User Confidence. It is also a significant Environmental factor that should be considered.

Ready to talk digital thermometers and temperature calibrators with us? We’d love to hear from you and discuss saving time AND money while conserving on landfill waste with fewer thermometer batteries.

Please contact us today and we’ll respond quickly. Thanks for reading!