It’s my understanding that a heatsink disapates heat away from a light board. Are there other purposes that it does and will thin sheets of aluminum work on 288 boards. I have access to all kinds of sheet and angle aluminum, and was wondering if putting two thin sheets together with a small seperation between them would work as heatsink.Just thinking I could save some money having access to aluminum sheets.
I build my light with strips and just used a 2 x 2 x .125 sheet of aluminum. Im sure ur way would dissipate better thus allowing more strips/boards. But im not the guy here. @dbrn32
Heat sinks work by increasing surface area to dissipate heat by conducting it away.
Two thin sheets with a space between would be an insulator and would overheat.
This would be the idea to wick away heat
I use aluminium sheet 2mm either one big sheet as below
or 4 seperate sheets like this other one below
I know there are heat transfer compounds to help move heat between circuit boards and heatsinks. Dont know which are best tho.
Like this
They put thermal tape between the light board and the heatsink, one thing i do recommend though bolt your light boards onto the heatsink, some dont do this they rely on the sticky thermal tape to hold the light to the heat sink, until the thermal tape delaminates which can happen.
The one pictured would be for passive radiation and less dependent on moving air across it. It depends on the heat load and carrying capacity of your heatsink material. Aluminum has a high thermal conductivity but low thermal mass: both good properties for a radiant heatsink. I would guess @dbrn32 has some metric he uses which might be helpful.
I did similar to you: built my own lights (Samsung EB strips) and used a stockpile of 1 1/2" X 6" aluminum tubing I had from an old job. Heavy and way overkill but probably saved $300 on the total build.
You could build your own heatsink by mounting channel or angle to the top of a plate. I would definitely use a thermal transfer compound on well prepared surfaces though. And make sure they are mounted as to not leave any gaps between surfaces.
A heat sink that everyone can recognise
Yessiree! A few more BTU’s generated there though…
Thanks for the tip. Had no idea… friggin physics…