Driver Heatsink Adhesive

How do people like DTR do that?

I think DTR might be able to answer that.

When heatsinking something, it's best to use a heatsink that was intended for that purpose. Hence, it would be worth your while to design the heatsink that does what it should do and nothing more, i.e. it sops up heat and doesn't touch any contacts.

Perhaps just think about it for a while. Chips have nice flat surfaces, but pins on the sides. Depending on the package, these pins could be lower than the surface level, or right up even with it. Either way, if you made the contact block for your heatsink smaller than the top of the chip, there's no way it could touch the pins.

You can use a flathead screwdriver to unscrew a philips screw, but a philips head works so much better.

I was trying to figure this out for my Ehgmus host I am gonna buy soon

Usual IC packages have pins under the level of the top surface, oe also right just under it (pinless) ..... so, placing the metal surface of the heatsink right in contact with the top of the chip, is 99% of the times safe ..... that what you have to check better, is all the rest ..... soldering points that can rise over the level of the chip (for tin excess), components around the chip that can be at the same level, oe a bit higher, than the chip, and so on .....

Basically, if the top of the chip is the higher surface, and there's nothing that can touch the heatsink, a flat surface is ok, and the thermal glue take care about filling the rest of the spaces ..... if you have capacitors or other components that rise over the top of the chip, you need to mill out the parts of the heatsink that go wheere these components are, making sort of "pedestal" that touch the chip and keep the rest over the components .....

An alternative are "silpads", but buying them as news can be difficult and not cheap ..... but some of them can be harvested from old CD and DVD readers and burners (some models have, under the bottom cover, one or more of the chips thermally coupled to the bottom cover, for use it as heatsink ..... sometimes this is done with thermal grease, some other times with various types of silpads ..... worth always the effort to save them, first or after they can become helpful )

^^^Thanks a TON for that info, I just found 6 of them on dvd readers I had gotten free from a comp repair place.
+1 :thanks:

I had been using regular JB Weld epoxy. No problems so far, but I may have to give that arctic silver a try since it's designed to conduct heat.

I have used the arctic alumina too. Apparently the arctic silver is worth the extra $5 but I'm kinda cheap ^_^

I am wanting to heatsink a microboost drive, but having no previous electronics experience, I am not sure what all on the top of the chip is electrically conductive and could cause problems... how does one tell what parts to never let touch via heatsink connection? Is it possible to just put heatsinks on certain parts?

AUTO XX said:

I have used the arctic alumina too. Apparently the arctic silver is worth the extra $5 but I'm kinda cheap ^_^

Click to expand...

Arctic alumina is better for heatsinking drivers in lasers because it is non-conductive and non-capacitive where as arctic silver adhesive is capacitive.

wannaburnstuff said:

I am wanting to heatsink a microboost drive, but having no previous electronics experience, I am not sure what all on the top of the chip is electrically conductive and could cause problems... how does one tell what parts to never let touch via heatsink connection? Is it possible to just put heatsinks on certain parts?

Click to expand...

Here is a thread that goes into heatsinking a microboost driver..



Dual MicroBoost driven Skyray build, 1.8A.

looks like I need to find myself some aluminum lol.