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FrozenGate by Avery

Gold plating copper/aluminium heatinks, possibility.

xivlia said:
many computer components are gold plated as well as nickel plated. theyre not only for look.. if its got no benefit. then why would they do it.
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That is patently false. You will not be able to find a single reference anywhere that supports that statement.

Gold plating is prevent corrosion, especially when there are electrical currents involved that may accelerate the process. Nobody is going to gold-plate electronics for heat transfer, especially when it requires a nickle layer in addition to the lower-thermal-conducting-than-copper gold--reducing the overall heat conductivity on the surface (as if it really mattered). For thermal conductivity, it would be better for a copper heatsink to not be plated at all than have gold+nickle on it.
 





adding nickel + gold on copper will not reduce the heat conductivity but increase it as it getting more mass. in theory heat conductivity will add on.. not reduce when more material is added on. and like you said, its a microscopic layer. so even if it doesnt increase thermal efficiency it will not reduce it either.
 
You are talking about fractional microns worth of gold plating. That is an absolutely negligible amounts of thermal mass. Even if there were any thermal purpose to such a microscopically thin layer (and there is none), you're putting a nickel (80W/m*K) barrier between your copper (385W/m*K) and your gold (314W/m*K), reducing the thermal conductivity of your heatsink. So effectively you've added metals to the surface that have a lower thermal conductivity and virtually zero relative mass.

If you just want your heatsink to look like bling, or not corrode that is perfectly reasonable. To claim that it does anything for the thermal characteristics of the heatsink is naive at best.
 
hmmm, well non the less its not gonna make any difference to heat exchange then is it. im still going to do it. it will look nice, and prevent corrosion on copper heatsinks.
 
Also remember when you plate metal on a metal surface you "build it up" so if there are
any tight fitting parts like a laser diode into it's pocket the original size of the parts are
going to have to be bigger/smaller than normal so you can fill it in with plating, good luck.
 
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yep, i took that into consideration :), im just gonna be plating my c6 copper heat sink. gonna cover up the set screw hole. and if the module hole gets tighter, il just sand it till its cut back to size. but i am sure that wont be necessary
 
You mentioned doing aluminum too. I am extremely interested in seeing how that turns out. That is something I might be interested in.
 
T_Warne said:
You mentioned doing aluminum too. I am extremely interested in seeing how that turns out. That is something I might be interested in.
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yep, i will be doing aluminium too, i just need to experiment with my copper first, after that i shall use one of my aluminium heatsink and see how that turns out. and i will post pics up after i am done.
 
i did nickel plating... and it turned out shit. i do not know if it was my skills on plating, or because it is a big chunk of copper.. i tired it step by step from videos on youtube. and they all had good outcomes, but mine were not then again they where using copper coins which has a lot less mass and surface area. some parts got plated, some parts turned black. so for now, its off the books. i might try it again once i know how the whole procedure works. i need to synthesize my own Nickel Sulphate and try it that way. it might work then.
 
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