heatsink ideas for LED's

hey guys...

i'm in the computer hardware industry... and i have tons of useless old amd stock cpu heatsinks...

wondering if anyone out there has thought about shaping one of those and using them to heatsink led's...

i'm thinking of doing a mag 2/3D mod to a SSC... and was looking around for options... and having a heatsink(with fins) would be awesome for it... wondering if anyone has thought of this or even done it?!?!?!

any thoughts?

KraZy

You need airflow over the fins for a finned heatsink to be more effective than solid mass.

you think so?

it should be about surface area... and there's about 1cm of solid AL that can be thermal pasted to the walls of a mag head... so it should be pretty decent...

KraZy

Surface area means jack squat if there's no interface to a medium to move the heat away. If you epoxy the heatsink to the mag head, then the mag head's surface area becomes the useable surface area.

hmm... guess u would have to put active cooling in there.. and drill some holes in the head of the mag... haha

kraZy

I was thinking about buying some 1.75" Al or Cu cylinder stock cut to the right size. I found a place where it can be bought online for about $10 for Cu and a couple bucks for the Al:

https://www.speedymetals.com/p-2949-1-34-rd-ca-110-copper.aspx

Then a hole through the center or there abouts would make a good heatsink in a Mag I think. It will not be a perfect fit since the ID if the Mag is bigger than 1.75, but the next size up is 2" which is too big. I would just shim it with some Al bar stock or something.

Or you could buy one of the nice ones from Sandwich Shoppe, though with some of them you are limited in your choice of reflectors due to the height of the sink when it is screwed into the Mag head.

I took a standard Northbridge Heatsink and drilled a hole in the center to put a Terralux TLE-6EX into the hole. Then I shaped it down to press fit into the maglite body. Cut the reflector tail to focus the LED. Then Thermal Epoxied the TLE-6EX into the rounded heatsink. When it was cured I epoxied the heatsink to the body to set the height. Adjustable beam focus by turning the head in and out, its just not cammed anymore.

I set this up for my brother in his 6D. He uses it to inspect trailers pre-run. He likes the big stick for Truck EDC.

The heatsink didn't have pins it was the folded over type. This way I got two paths laterally to the body 2mm thick. I didn't see a point trying to radiate heat out into the air in the body.