Heat Sink Material
Heat Sink Material
(OP)
We are placing three electrical components in close proximity to one another and it has been determined that there must be a heat sink/heat spreader plate to keep the temperature within operating range. What would you suggest as a material to use for this heat spreader plate. I've heard aluminum 6061 and 6063 suggested.





RE: Heat Sink Material
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
However, I suggest that you back up a bit, and drag out the detailed spec sheets for each of the devices you are trying to cool, read the background information provided by the device manufacturer, and attempt to size a commercial heat sink for each device, using thermal resistances and device heat dissipation to limit junction temperatures to safe limits, before deciding that some arbitrary piece of sheet metal is going to be adequate.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
Good link. It seems I then want the highest diffusivity/$.
telecomguy,
It seems that I am using the wrong term to describe what I am looking for. This article defines a heat sink as " a passive component that cools a device by dissipating heat into the surrounding air". We are really trying to sink the electronics to the sheet metal enclosure. There is no moving air inside, but we can create a path to the air on the outside of the enclosure.
I think the term I am looking for is more "heat spreader".
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
If you can handle Ohm's Law, with series resistances, you can do it.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Heat Sink Material
TTFN
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RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
Pure aluminium and pure copper are much better conductors than any of their alloys. I agree with the comments above about boundary layers and doing the calculations.
This can be a tough discussion with co-workers. I was analysing an enclosure into which I would put a circulating fan. I worked out that a nylon cover 2mm thick would see a temperature drop of 1.5C° while dumping my heat. This meant that nylon, 2mm thick, with a substantial cross sectional area, was a perfectly good heat sink.
You may be working with electronics people who think in terms of electronics analogies. In electronics, you can assume materials either conduct, or they don't. Thermal is not that simple.
RE: Heat Sink Material
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Heat Sink Material
Hard to see how, as it's not very clear yet exactly what the problem is.
RE: Heat Sink Material
If the thermal path is quite long relative to its breadth, then, yes, coppermetals may be a better choice than aluminum. (Heat pipes are even better, of course.) However, brass is a better choice than copper because pure copper is so gummy that it gets expensive to fabricate.
The other argument against coppermetals is that they have a high rate of what retailers call 'shrinkage', because of their scrap value, so you have to add security costs, or lack of security costs, to the material costs.
This might be a good time to disassemble some old laptop computers and study the extreme measures used to cool their CPUs.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material
RE: Heat Sink Material