Keeping cool.....

[Toddman214]

I've looked around a bit, but didnt see much about this or if it might help. I know heat can be an issue with more powerful lasers. I'm building my first one and want to keep it cool. I have a rkcstr driver and lpc-815 diode. The rkcstr driver will generate quite a bit of it's own heat from what I understand, as will the diode. It seams to me that if the rkcstr driver was stored outside of the aixiz module, things would stay much cooler. Perhaps pack the aixiz module will thermal paste and aluminum foil or something?

 

[GBD]

You need a larger piece of metal called a heatsink to sit around the module, and you can also sink your driver to said piece. Typically these are just solid pieces of aluminum/copper, and work best when they have the most volume and most surface area exposed to air as possible. (read up on natural convection for more details on that)

Never use any foils, just solid (preferably as less gaps and pieces) metal for that. The more layers you have of foil or whatever the worse your heat dissapation will be due to trapped air.

 

[Toddman214]

Thanks for the response GBD. I work IT for a living so I have a pretty strong understanding of heat sinking and keeping things cool. I'll have a heat sink on my laser for sure as I have a bunch CPU heat sinks around here in old computers. I just haven't built a laser before, and figure that if the driver isn't inside of the aixiz housing, that should keep things even that much cooler for the diode. I wasn't actually going to just pack the foil in, but wrap a long strip of foil around the wire, thick enough to fit snugly in the housing and pack thermal past between the layers to transfer the heat.

 

[GBD]

yes, having the driver extranal will keep it cooler, but keep in mind if this thing makes its way into a host anytime soon, you will need to compromise a bit to fit both diode and drive onto the same heatsink.

since this is an LPC-815 build and you have computer CPU heatsinks.. I suppose that will be just fine.

 

[Toddman214]

So, the driver board will need to be heat sinked as well? I didn't know that.

 

[GBD]

It will depend on the driver you are using. some will need heatsinking and some wont, really depends on the design.

For example, most linear drivers do need heatsinking since they waste alot of power as heat, but if you are using something like a sync buck converter which has a very high efficiency, it will waste less power as heat outing the same as a linear.

so yes, it will need heatsink, it may not, depends again on your driver, since you said you are using the rkcstr driver, I dont personally know, I have never used it.