heat sink or not

Hi all,
Wondering if I need a heat sink for a 10mw green laser module . I am looking to run it for 12hours at a time. Thoughts?

I'm assuming it is a 523 nm DPSS module? In which case, I would say yes if your running it for long periods of time. While it may only emit 10 mW of power, the IR diode used to pump it will be much stronger and will likely need a bit of help keeping cool.

You wont need a big heatsink, but you should still have one, there are plenty of cheap 12mm heatsinks on ebay which will fit a green dpss module.

Or if you have some spare cpu heatsinks around you could drill a hole for the module, that would provide more than enough cooling for a 10mW greenie.

I've run chinese 30mW pointers for days at a time. Temperature rise is like 10-20C above ambient.

The entire system will dissipate a half-watt. You're being goofy if you think you need a heat sink for half watt.