In one of our past articles, we have introduced the concept of emissivity and how a material’s emissivity affects the accuracy of our temperature gun readings. You may have experienced discrepancies when reading temperatures of rare or shiny materials. In our previous emissivity article, you discovered that different materials may require different emissivity settings in order for the temperature gun to give accurate readings. Changing the infrared gun’s emissivity setting should be done with the help of an emissivity table.

Our customer service team has let us know that a lot of you would like a more in-depth emissivity table to work with, and so we took some time and compiled a comprehensive table from as many reliable sources as we could find.

The Ultimate Emissivity Table

We have compiled the biggest and most comprehensive emissivity reference table available. We like to go overboard, it seems… Consequently, the list includes pretty much every material known to man.

Ultimate Emissivity Reference Table

One has to remember that these emissivity values are only estimates of the material’s surface. The surface’s roughness or finish can affect the material’s emissivity.

In addition, here are our other tips in order to get the correct temperature of the material’s surface:

1. For shiny objects, keep the surface away from other objects that might reflect their temperature.
2. For semi-transparent objects, make sure that the background is uniform and colder than the measured material.
3. The angle of measurement is important. So make sure your angle of measurement is near perpendicular. In some situations, an oblique angle may be necessary for accuracy – such as shooting across a grill grate and not into the hot coals.

Note: When absolute measurements are required, the material should be prepared for measurement using matte black tape, or the temperature should be measured using an infrared thermometer with a probe.