Heatsinking tightly packed Crees?

Gomer

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Oct 13, 2006
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I want to squeeze a bunch of XR-E's onto a small area mounted with thermal epoxy. No way I would do this passively, so looking at active cooling.

Driven at 1amp, anyone have a feel as to how many emitters I can safely put on a heatsink like this?

http://www.vantecusa.com/p_cck_7015.html
 
Are you going to run optics or just a bunch of Crees bare? Considering the sink is made for 478 pin Pentium4 processors and is made of copper, it should be able to handle at least 20 Crees driven at 350mA. Just remember the decibel rating is 38 so you'll hear the fan running.
Another option is a silver heat sink, those pull heat away quickly but are very expensive.

Tell us more what you are trying to do and there might be a passive solution out there.
 
This is for a little reef lighting projects. I did some things in the past with the old Luxeon Stars and K2's but leds have come a long way since them. Ideally, this little block would hold 8 white, 2 blue and 2 royal blue XR-E's. I have a couple of 700ma drivers, but since those are tied up with a 12xK2 setup, I thought I'd try 1000mA drivers.

Since they will light a "cube" tank that is about a 13" cube, there isn't any need for optics
 
Data doesn't give any info on thermal resistance, so we'll have to extrapolate.

According to this link the pentium 4 runs at somthing like 60W
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation#Intel_Pentium_4

If the crees are dissipating somthing like 3W each, then in theory, you could run 20 on the heatsink.

However, it would also depend on the comparison of junction to case thermal resistance for a pentium and the cree, as well as absolute max junction temperature.

To be on the safe side, I would half this figure, and put no more than 10 on.
 
For maximum life you want the junction temperature at 80°C or less. Each emitter has a typical junction to thermal pad resistance of 8°C/W. Add maybe another 2°C/W to account for the thermal epoxy. This gives 10°C/W total. If you plan to drive the LEDs at 1000 mA then each would be dissipating about 3.7 watts, and the thermal rise of the junction above the heat sink temperature would be 3.7*10 or 37°C. Let's just call it 40°C. Since you want the junction temperature at no more than 80°C this means the heat sink can't be over 80-40, or 40°C. If we assume a 25°C ambient then the heat sink can be allowed a temperature rise of 40-25, or 15°C. The only unknown at this point is the thermal impedance of the heat sink. Just by looking at it I'd say it's around 0.3°C/W. This means you can safely dissipate 15/0.3, or about 50 watts. At 3.7 watts per emitter you can mount about 12 or 13 emitters and still keep the junction temperature under 80°C.

Doing a similar set of calculations for driving the emitters at 350 mA instead of 1000 mA gives a maximum of about 125 emitters. The far greater number is because the temperature rise of the junction above the thermal pad is far less at 350 mA as opposed to 1000 mA.

In all cases I didn't take into account the efficiency of the emitters. Since roughly 20% to 30% of the power is emitted as light, then the actual temperature rise will only be about 70% to 80% of what I calculated. In other words, going by my figures you should have a safety margin.
 
Many thanks for the feedback! I truly appreciate it.
 
"lap" the heatsink using 2000 grit wet dry automoble sandpaper, progress to 4000 and 6000 grit. Do the same witht he led mount, this will ensure 100% contact and will transfer heat better.

for a tutorail on heatsink lapping, google it using "heatsink mods, computer".
 
Bushman, do any overclocking in your day ;)

If you can use a larger heat sink, it will be a LOT less noisy than the server heat sink. I tested a Thermalright heat sink with heat pipes and it had the space for a 92mm fan (tall sucka!) Ran the AMD Athlon64 300+ (1.8GHz) CPU with the fan shut off running two benchmarks at the same time for two hours. Max temp on die was 69C. The CPU pushes 29 watts and the heat sink took the heat.

If there is any way possible, run a taller heat sink and those heat pipes really work. :)
 
Vertical clearance is my problem. I really only have about 2" from floor to ceiling height. I can however make it abou 8" long and 4" wide
 
The heat sink you referenced has a .45°C/W.

At a 15° temp rise, you dissipate 13 watts.

So you would have to limit each LED to 1.3 watts.

I would drive @ about 700ma with this heat sink, since you will also have some thermal resistance for the epoxy. You can add some alumina to the epoxy for better conduction.

Larry Cobb
 
The heat sink you referenced has a .45°C/W.

At a 15° temp rise, you dissipate 13 watts.
Actually you can dissipate 15/0.45 or 33 watts for a 15°C temperature rise. That equates to roughly 9 emitters if driven at 1 amp each.
 

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