DIY heatsinks

[byteboy]

What about building your own heatsinks?

I know there is a lot on the internet about building your own heatsinks, but what is your experience? Can it be done by the average DIY-er?

Is it possible to make high quality (passive), cheap, low Rth ( < 0.2) and good looking heatsinks?

I'm particular interested in practical experience from people who built such heatsinks themselves.

[tiroth]

I've done it; I used a 'U' of 0.1" copper sheet and stacked 'U's of aluminum sheet inside this, bolted everything together. In the end, it did work, but visual appearance was very poor. It was also a lot of effort.

I now just buy scrap heatsinks on eBay.

[RKH]

John Inlow ("Carpenter" on this forum) has/had a nice web site on his DIY heatsinks. I can't access it now. John, is your site still available?

[byteboy]

Hi Trioth,

Since I will be in need of a lot of heatsink hardware soon, I am doing a little investigation here to see if it is feasable to construct my own.

What (estimated-) Rth did you achieve (power dissipation required) and what further dimensions did it need for this?

One of my reservations is also if you can bond the individual metal parts good enough together to get a good overall heat distribution efficiency in the heatsink itself.

I am the average DIY-er I was referring to in my 1st post, so I don't have all the fancy equipment and expert skills to do the metal work.

Visual appearance is also important to me, so I want to make sure that the result of a particular method of constructing your own heatsinks is both good looking and -working.

The amount of effort you have to/want to put in is of course related to the amount of money you can save.

And the amount of money you can save is also dependent on how many heatsinks you will be making, the benefits of "mass production". ;-)

[Nelson Pass]

Heat sinks are very easy to make. Really.

[hitsware]

With mosfets how important is it to have all the devices on one heatsink. Would there possibly be an advantage to individual sinks for each device ? Parralleling lateral devices so no concern about thermal compensation..........mike

[byteboy]

Heat sinks are very easy to make. Really.

That kind of answer from you, "The one and Only", makes me curious about what would be your "preferred method".......... ;-)

[cowanrg]

any way you look at it, heatsinks are hard work! you either have to work months to pay for them new, or work months trying to find a surplus pair you can affor. OR you could design and build your own (which im sure is still work!) heatsinks are the necessary evil!

[JCoffey]

Originally posted by Nelson Pass
Heat sinks are very easy to make. Really.

Then why do they cost so much?
Sorry I couldnt resist.... LOL

[mwmkravchenko]

They cost so much because of tooling, short runs and because they simple can charge what they want. Used is good if you can find them. Making your own can be done well. There are decided advantages. You can but 12mm ( 1/2" ) plate and bond or bolt fins to it. You can get more sophisticated and cut a bunch of channels and make up a bonded fin heat sink. There are ways to do it. It requires the right adhesive. Peferable a thermally conductive epoxy or filled isocyanarate (speeled it wrong again).
and some patience. Could can and should be done. Cheaper than a bargain surplus?? Nope. Better??? Depends on the plate thickness, fin thicknes, spacing and depth. But done right a bonded fin heat sink is one of the most efficient means of dissipating allot of heat.

Food for thought in BIG BITES

Mark