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Heat sinking for an x-drive?

upaa27

upaa27

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Hello all,

As you all know the x-drive is a rectangular shape and I have mine set at 3.5 amps. Running it this high really needs heat sinking although I do not know the best way to do this. I read that you can just epoxy on a slab of copper but that seems very crude unless you fin it. What would you guys do?

Right now I am leaning toward epoxying the driver to the host but his might make it difficult to remove.
 





crazyspaz

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You can either epoxy a chunk (or finned, obviously) of copper or aluminum- copper being preferred. Or you could epoxy it right to the host like you said- a third option would be to epoxy a heatsink to the driver, then said heatsink to the host. That might make it a bit easier to remove.
 
starlight

starlight

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I'm considering doing this to a lab style build I'm about to do for safety. What part of the driver do you attach the heat sink to ? Thanks in advance
 
crazyspaz

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usually the main IC. If you can't figure out which thing the IC is...well...
 
IWIRE

IWIRE

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I usually just thermal epoxy mine down wherever I wanted to mount it. Unless it's epoxied down in a well where there is no access to the side of it, I've had success with running a pocket knife blade between the epoxy and what I mounted it to and carefully popping it loose.
 
upaa27

upaa27

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Ok, thanks for the suggestions. I think I might just epoxy it to the host itself.
 
DTR

DTR

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Yea you will want it attached to the main heatsink or the host body. The problem with just putting a small block of aluminum or copper yes it may extend out the duty cycle by a small amount usually not much but with nowhere for that heat to go it is retained and it will take forever to cool back down so the off time will be very long.

f76f.jpg
 
starlight

starlight

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I see most drivers attached to diode directly.
Will long lead wires cause the driver to work harder or heat up more?
 
crazyspaz

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If your wires are ridiculously long, maybe. But I doubt you are going to use 1,000m of wiring for your laser :)
 
Pi R Squared

Pi R Squared

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starlight said:
I see most drivers attached to diode directly.
Will long lead wires cause the driver to work harder or heat up more?
Click to expand...

You will never have wires long enough to make that kind of a difference in your laser. The ones attached directly to the diode don't require heat sinking, however they also aren't required to be attached directly to the driver.

Alan
 
starlight

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Pi R Squared said:
You will never have wires long enough to make that kind of a difference in your laser. The ones attached directly to the diode don't require heat sinking, however they also aren't required to be attached directly to the driver.

Alan
Click to expand...

Thanks. I made a ugly lab style laser and the driver becomes hot to the touch after 20 seconds or so. I guess I need to attach driver to diode directly.
 
Pi R Squared

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starlight said:
Thanks. I made a ugly lab style laser and the driver becomes hot to the touch after 20 seconds or so. I guess I need to attach driver to diode directly.
Click to expand...

No I think you misunderstood, the ones that are attached directly to the diode are lower power so they don't need heat sinking. If your driver gets hot too fast then don't attach it directly to the diode, it needs a heat sink or a fan.

Alan
 
starlight

starlight

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I had it heatsinked but was worried.

How hot can a driver before failure?

And heatsinking isn't nessasary when attach to diode because the heatsinking is shared with the diode heatsink? I just don't wanna fry my driver and trying to get long run times (5 minutes would be great) out if the project.

Driver is x-drive 2.4a from dtr
 
Last edited:
Pi R Squared

Pi R Squared

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starlight said:
I had it heatsinked but was worried.

How hot can a driver before failure?

And heatsinking isn't nessasary when attach to diode because the heatsinking is shared with the diode heatsink? I just don't wanna fry my driver and trying to get long run times (5 minutes would be great) out if the project.

Driver is x-drive 2.4a from dtr
Click to expand...

No the heat sinking isn't shared with the diode, I said less powerful drivers don't need heat sinking. I don't know how hot is too hot for a 2.4A x-drive but if your worried about it just heat sink it, and since you said its a lab laser, maybe you can put a fan in the box.

upaa27 said:
As crazyspaz said you can epoxy the ic to the host/module
Click to expand...

He said it was a lab laser, not a hand held.

Alan
 
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