removing heat with thermal tape and small heatsinks

Gap pads don't dissipate heat, they conduct it.

Win could use a heat sink below the board, with a gap-pad between to conduct heat from the board to the sink. The gap-pad would conform to the features of the board and the heat sink, neither of which will be very flat.

His board has high voltages and probably needs low capacitances, so a hard or thin connection to a heat sink might not work.

I keep fighting that problem, the tradeoff between thermal conduction and capacitance.

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--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin
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150oC???? And that's just at the surface...whatever the failure mechanism of those resistors, you're heading for it at breakneck speed. Looks like those tapes are just used to glue heatsinks to components.
Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

Well yes, but the CRCW1210-HP are meant for use at high power levels. Vishay claims a 0.75-watt rating up to Tambient = 75C, then they derate linearly to 155C. They do not specify large copper ares or other tricks. So it may be this resistor is meant to work hot.

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

If the Flir has enough resolution to resolve the hot spot, then it's seeing the resistive element, which is the hottest part.

The end cap temperatures cen be measured by dabbing some high-emissivity stuff on them. White-out, whiteboard marker, sonething like that.

150C is probably fine for the hot spot of a resistor.

Here's a 1206 at 0.5 watts.

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Hot spot theta is about 80 K/w. If the pads were bigger, with maybe some thermal vias, it would be a lot lower.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

Okay, so you're right up against the maximum. They did they happen to mention what goes along with 155oC operation, like permanent change in resistance and MTBF?

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

That resistor is metal oxide over alumina with a glass overcoat and metal end caps. 155C won't do much to that.

TCRs are 100 or 200 PPM, so it won't be a precision resistor.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

The point, and you know it, is that they do not do so very well.

I referenced the correct action when I mentioned thermally CONDUCTIVE epoxy.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

NO! PERIOD.

Whenever possible, a hard connection to a sinking element should be made.

Gap pads are for conductively cooled designs where one wants the entire assembly to homogenize (settle) out at a single temp.

Want proof? Look at how they attach chips to their sinking die hats.

It ain't with some sponge pad. It is a high conductivity matrix. And yes I am referring to thermal conductivity and shouldn't have to say that either except for dopes like you and keith childishly nit picking everything.

A technicality is that as a mediun 'conducts', the heat in the target device is 'dissipated'. So even your jab at me there is in err.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I know how gap pads work, Johnny. I have designed conductively cooled products.

We incorporated machined 'pads' or 'pedestals' on the case 'floor' so the gaps between the pad and the devices being soaked was minimized.

I am intimately familiar with gap pads AND many other manners of heat abatement in electronic circuitry.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Hard anodized Al is a non-conductive surface treatment.

Three levels are (technically still) available. All three are sufficient.

The cost (of hard anodizing) prohibits most Mfgr's designs to incorporate it, so most off the shelf sinks are chem etch or simple anodize treatment, which is not insulative. AND if it is floating, it is no different than the exposed nodes of the cicuitry as far as voltage goes. And IF hard anodized it would not carry any at all, AND it could also get tied to ground if one is worried about that.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

Winfield Hill wrote in news:q37hrg01sn0 @drn.newsguy.com:

We mixed fine fiber glass strands into our simple RTV potting mix and of course, since I was doing HV and this was HV, we used vacuum to fill all the voids. We did not have HV SMD sections to worry about until my smoke inhaler driver, but many of those multiplier section were hand soldered parts on top of solder bumps to purposefully raise the part off the board. We even had slots under our HV diodes that end up becoming RTV walls.

But the point is that the fiberglass filler made the potting conduct heat better.

Were you to go to the daughterboard schema, you could increase the form factor chosen for certain of those resistors, or simply go with tiny radial thru hole devices. let them radiate and put the sink on the larger device alone or the resistors might actually soak that part up to a higher temp on a shared sink. Maybe change the three SOT-23 parts for a larger form factor, higher rated part with more surface area on top to interface with a sink, which the SOT-23 is not really made for.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Where have you been?

Do you think that FLIR is some cheap chinese flea market knock off?

There are exactly ZERO IR imagers from US makers that cannot resolve a SOT-23 'hot spot'.

Common sense, John. It isn't hard to do. None of us (here or in US manufacturing) are as dumb as you apparently think we are.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Damn, John. You got one right.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

snipped-for-privacy@decadence.org wrote in news:q386r7$87p$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org:

The gap pads we used then conducted the heat to the case through a thinner pad cross section. A critical factor in getting a good theta number. Gap pads work (well) in some applications. Carrying off the heat from discreet parts running at their limits... not so much. I just wanted to clarify that, because I refered to both the pedestals and the gap pad as "pads".

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

But... that's not all that's important. The rest of the system, including the PCB, is also at elevated temperatures, and maybe NOT as insensitive as the resistor parts.

I've seen electrolytics with melt/scorch marks from nearby components, and PCBs that turned black. Good news: you can bead-blast a blackened bit of fiberglass-renforced-plastic, then reimpregnate the fibers with Q-dope, and put the electronic ignition right back into the Buick. I sold that car years ago...

Reply to
whit3rd

Should we be questioning the HV insulating properties of tapes, thermally-conductive pads, gap pads, etc.?

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

It was easy with the Flir to separately measure the resistor and SOT-23 temperatures. One sense resistor value* favored the resistors, they cooled and the transistors overheated. After watching that scene at 1200-volts too long, with Pd at 3x past rating, there was a snap (small-scale explosion). After I calmed down, all the semiconductors were destroyed. One went first and took out the rest.

  • apportions current between the resistor and transistors. I won't be using that value again at 1200 volts..
--
 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

One square inch if the stuff that I use, compressed to 1 mm thick, is

0.25 K/W.

Messy, and hard to repair.

This stuff

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is 1.4 w/m-K. My gap-pad material is over 4x better than that.

Filled epoxy isn't a good thermal conductor because it's still mostly epoxy.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

But a PCB has traces and vias and connector pins. Win's board also has surface-mount parts on the bottom side. A gap-pad conforms to all that.

Extruded heat sinks tend to not be flat, unless you do a secondary fly-cut pass on them. A gap-pad fixed that problem too.

Oh. I just use them to keep parts from frying.

Sorry, I use numbers when I do engineering.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

Hard anodize is reliable up to about 200 volts. It's a pretty good thermal conductor (because it's thin) but also adds a lot of capacitance.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

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