Manufacturer of Folded Fin heatsinks

[snarfer]

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience having a folded fin heatsink manufactured and, if so, where they had it done, and how much it cost.

I need to make some prototypes to begin with and it's kind of difficult to find much data about the folded fin designs beforehand. So I need to find a place that can work with me without charging an arm and a leg.

Ideally they'd have stock on hand of some type that I could modify to suit my design. Even if they just had a bunch of folded aluminum or copper sheet that I could take to a fab shop and have a base plate attached to that would be great. Mostly it look like the major heatsink manufacturers don't really stock the stuff. They say it is "custom order" on their sites.

The folded fin design seems like it could be good for my application (portable lighting for film/video) because weight is an issue. But first I need to experiment.

So anyway I can start calling these places, but first I thought I'd see if anyone had any information.

 

[lowatts]

I don't know of any sources for folded fin heatsinks. But I noticed you mentioned possible gluing the sinks to a base plate, and concern about size. Given those, I just thought I'd throw in a couple of ideas to think about, if you haven't already thought them.

One is to attach multiple computer sinks to the base plate with thermo epoxy, there should be a lot of sizes, though all relatively small, to pick from to fit your form factor--possible to mix and match. Another is you could use 120mm computer cooling fans, to reduce the need for sinks and keep your project size at a minimum. These fans are generally quiet, cheap, and easily run on 5-12vdc.

 

[snarfer]

Not exactly. What I want is aluminum or copper sheet that has been stamped or bent into a sort of zigzag pattern, or accordion folded. I talked to a fabricator friend and he said he doesn't have the right machines to do it, but some companies do.

This is not a homemade kind of project, by the way. It is more of a low-volume commercial project.

 

[VanIsleDSM]

If weight is a concern I wouldn't be considering copper. Depending on the design, A folded copper heatsink would probably outweigh an aluminum extrusion by quite a bit.

And that's probably what I'd use unless you really need to shave off every ounce you can.. aluminum extrusions are definitely the most cost effective and widely available heatsinks.

 

[mahoney]

You might be better off looking at electronics surplus dealers for stuff to experiment with. You might be able to find someone's over-runs or scrap. I've seen aluminium folded fin heatsinks in older Leprecon lighting dimmer packs, so if you can find a dead one you could salvage a couple square feet of the material.

I imagine that the fin thickness, length, and spacing are closely designed to accommodate the amount of heat that has to be moved for each particular application. That's probably why there's no "standard" profiles in stock anywhere.