Homemade heatsink

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Darsh

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This might be stupid/crazy or it might be genius :P

I found a nice diy led kit online but it doesn't come with a heatsink, of course I can buy one for it but it got me thinking about how I could possibly make one.

Usually the heatsinks for our leds are aluminium but aluminium isn't "the best" metal when it comes to thermal conductivity.
Aluminium has a thermal conductivity of 237 watts per metre-kelvin (W·m−1·K−1)
Copper has a thermal conductivity of 401 watts per metre-kelvin (W·m−1·K−1)

Copper is more expensive and aluminium is better at releasing heat, making it a popular choice for our heatsinks.

Can anyone give me a good reason why it wouldn't be possible to make a heatsink out of copper pennies/cents? It could be made as big or small as possible in any shape imaginable, all it would take is some patience and quite a lot of thermal paste.
 
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In Poland the 1, 2 and 5 "cent" coins are 70% copper and basically worthless as currency.
If I end up trying it it may or may not work and I don't know how I would actually test it?? Digital thermometer??
 
dantimdad said:
Pennies aren't solid copper. They are almost all zinc. It's a terrible heatsink material.

Would look cool though.
Click to expand...

In addition to the post above, pennies weigh more in comparison to aluminum so keep that in mind.

There is a lot of information online about heatsinks related to overclocking computer CPUs so searching for "heat sink efficiency" should give you a starting place to look and then see where it goes from there. Good luck!
 
There is so many pre-fabbed super efficient heatsinks out there (sold by the foot) I am not sure you'd want to spend your time re-inventing the wheel.

Proper heatsink has desired mass to suck up and re-distribute the heat (generally from base to fins) If you ever take out the heatsink especially from older model DELL that were still made out of copper there is tremendous heft to it. Aluminium replaced it simply because of cost. Most servers still come with proper heatsinks as they are considered mission critical (not all)

Pennies while cool looking arent copper (except for some ancient ones) but have little to no mass. I don't see how they could provide much cooling.
 
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Adding thermal gel is also a helpful part of heat transfer.
 
Darsh said:
This might be stupid/crazy or it might be genius :p

I found a nice diy led kit online but it doesn't come with a heatsink, of course I can buy one for it but it got me thinking about how I could possibly make one.

Usually the heatsinks for our leds are aluminium but aluminium isn't "the best" metal when it comes to thermal conductivity.
Aluminium has a thermal conductivity of 237 watts per metre-kelvin (W·m−1·K−1)
Copper has a thermal conductivity of 401 watts per metre-kelvin (W·m−1·K−1)

Copper is more expensive and aluminium is better at releasing heat, making it a popular choice for our heatsinks.

Can anyone give me a good reason why it wouldn't be possible to make a heatsink out of copper pennies/cents? It could be made as big or small as possible in any shape imaginable, all it would take is some patience and quite a lot of thermal paste.
Click to expand...
Gotta find solid copper pennies, today's have zinc inner core.
 
Darsh said:
This might be stupid/crazy or it might be genius :p

I found a nice diy led kit online but it doesn't come with a heatsink, of course I can buy one for it but it got me thinking about how I could possibly make one.

Usually the heatsinks for our leds are aluminium but aluminium isn't "the best" metal when it comes to thermal conductivity.
Aluminium has a thermal conductivity of 237 watts per metre-kelvin (W·m−1·K−1)
Copper has a thermal conductivity of 401 watts per metre-kelvin (W·m−1·K−1)

Copper is more expensive and aluminium is better at releasing heat, making it a popular choice for our heatsinks.

Can anyone give me a good reason why it wouldn't be possible to make a heatsink out of copper pennies/cents? It could be made as big or small as possible in any shape imaginable, all it would take is some patience and quite a lot of thermal paste.
Click to expand...
Go aluminum with tiny fan, if possible. One law of Thermal dynamics is "heat chases cold or attractive to it." little fan be big help with heat sink.
 
Very interesting idea. One additional consideration is design. I'm not aware of finned copper. But here's an idea....pick up finned aluminium heat sink. Where you wish to locate the LEDs, machine in a "slug" of copper, held in place with thermal adhesive. The best of both worlds!

You also might want to check out @Paul B 's DIY LED build where he used copper pipe, but then ran water through the pipe to help dissipate the heat, HERE.
 
redfishbluefish said:
Very interesting idea. One additional consideration is design. I'm not aware of finned copper. But here's an idea....pick up finned aluminium heat sink. Where you wish to locate the LEDs, machine in a "slug" of copper, held in place with thermal adhesive. The best of both worlds!

You also might want to check out @Paul B 's DIY LED build where he used copper pipe, but then ran water through the pipe to help dissipate the heat, HERE.
Click to expand...

Yea that's a nice idea actually :)

Paul B is quite the creative guy :)
 
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redfishbluefish said:
Very interesting idea. One additional consideration is design. I'm not aware of finned copper. But here's an idea....pick up finned aluminium heat sink. Where you wish to locate the LEDs, machine in a "slug" of copper, held in place with thermal adhesive. The best of both worlds!

You also might want to check out @Paul B 's DIY LED build where he used copper pipe, but then ran water through the pipe to help dissipate the heat, HERE.
Click to expand...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/201...g-for-electronic-CPU-GPU-RAM/32589138124.html

finned copper..
all heat sinks need surface area..
copper is 3x (variable) the cost raw of aluminum and AFAICT not really extrude-able like aluminum..

want to have fun w/ building heatsinks.. consider diamond.
you can buy bags of created diamond powder from China for cheap..;)
https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Powder-000-Grit-0-0-5microns/dp/B009NA0A5S
just need to err.. mold in into something.. ;)

https://www.electronics-cooling.com...rs-for-the-thermal-management-of-gan-devices/

but back to pennies..Stack em.. ;)
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2424&page=9

tama1.jpg
 
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Here's the history, according to the U.S. Mint:

  • From 1837 to 1857, the cent was made of bronze (95 percent copper, and five percent tin and zinc).
  • From 1857, the cent was 88 percent copper and 12 percent nickel, giving the coin a whitish appearance.
  • The cent was again bronze (95 percent copper, and five percent tin and zinc) from 1864 to 1962, except: In 1943, the coin's composition was changed to zinc-coated steel. This change was only for the year 1943 and was due to the critical use of copper for the war effort. However, a limited number of copper pennies were minted that year.
  • In 1962, the cent's tin content, which was quite small, was removed. That made the metal composition of the cent 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc.
The alloy remained 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc until 1982, when the composition was changed to 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper (copper-plated zinc). Cents of both compositions appeared in that year.
Click to expand...
 
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Darsh said:
In Poland the 1, 2 and 5 "cent" coins are 70% copper and basically worthless as currency.
If I end up trying it it may or may not work and I don't know how I would actually test it?? Digital thermometer??
Click to expand...
https://en.ucoin.net/catalog/?country=poland

I can't find the alloy breakdowns..
But starting in 2013 brass plated steel..
1990-2019 maganese-brass

OK, theoretically. A one grosz coin, according to the National Bank of Poland, is made of a manganese-brass alloy, MM59, weighs 1.64 grams and has a diameter of 15.5 mm. Looking at websites of UK scrap metal dealers, I can see that a tonne of scrap brass is worth £1,800. By my calculations, then, the scrap value (at today's exchange rates and scrap prices) of a grosz coin is 1.47 grosze.
Click to expand...
https://jeziorki.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-poland-cannot-afford-grosz.html

ok mm59 composition..
https://walcownia.com.pl/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Manganese-brass-with-lead_13072015_EN.pdf

56.5-60% copper.. rest mostly zinc..plus.
 
Last edited:
oreo5457 said:
https://en.ucoin.net/catalog/?country=poland

I can't find the alloy breakdowns..
But starting in 2013 brass plated steel..
1990-2019 maganese-brass


https://jeziorki.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-poland-cannot-afford-grosz.html

ok mm59 composition..
https://walcownia.com.pl/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Manganese-brass-with-lead_13072015_EN.pdf

56.5-60% copper.. rest mostly zinc..plus.
Click to expand...

Good research!!

I didn't see that one, the one I read it said before 2013 the coins were made of 70% Copper, 28.2% brass and 1.8% Manganese.
Oh well..
 

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