thermal compound?

[Col-Mas Anor]

I was looking at my luxeon and heatsink, and a thought came to me. This looks a little like a CPU and heat sink in my computer. I build my own PCs, so I have had a little practice putting chips and heatsinks together. Anyway, in my computers I use a drop of Arctic Silver between my CPU and heatsink. This improves thermal conductivity, allowing heat to dissapate more easily through the heatsink. Has anyone used a drop of this on their saber... or do the Luxeons not get hot enough to worry about?

[Olos Nay]

I used thermal compound on my lux3 on my heatsink.

However, contrary to computers, I have no efficient way to monitor how efficient the compound is on the luxeon. Seing how we want to cool it down, and how the compound help transmitting heat, I'd say it can only be a good thing, particularly with Artic Silver. I know I overdrive my led and it doesn't seam to make any problems, maybe the said sink/compound combination helps.

Something that sabermakers might also want to consider is the sort of thermal compound that also acts as glue - this could turn useful on custom heatsink for some people, making it easier to fit led & sink together in a saber.

All in all, I don't see why we should refrein from putting some thermal compound on between the lux and heatsink, when properly applied. I'd also suggest to properly lap the sink and ledboard.

[Jeffrek]

Ive used thermal epoxy in the past. Its like the artic silver but its also an adhesive. Nowdays though I just use cooltape as it does exactly the same job but is lots more convenient to use.

[vortextwist]

I would imagine with the 5 watters that would work better since they put off more heat than the 3 watts. or if you don't have much of an heatsink.

[Dragonstar]

Arctic Alumina Adhesive, in a very thin layer, will permanently and thermally bond an LED to an aluminum heatsink. I have used this several times on Cree leds to extruded fin heatsinks and the seal is truly bombproof.