Tag Archives: PCB

How to Design Out Your Heat Sinks with Smart PCB Thermal Design, December 15th Webinar

We’ve got another webinar on tap, this one for next week, December 15th, 2011 at 2PM EST. Our topic this month is, “How to Design Out Your Heat Sinks with Smart PCB Thermal Design”.

It seems like a contradiction in terms doesn’t it? Why would a thermal management company like ATS teach you to design out your heat sinks? Wouldn’t we be better business people if we helped you design in more heat sinks?

Well, no. And here’s why.

At ATS, we are the leader in Innovations in Thermal Management. And for us, those innovations have to be useful.  There are many innovations in thermal management in the market but most simply aren’t truly practical to deploy except in a lab.

Here’s the link to join our free webinar, Thursday, December 15th, 2PM EST, “How to Design Out Your Heat Sinks with Smart PCB Thermal Design”.

And, many innovations are not products. They are know how, experience and understanding of the vectors involved in todays complex thermal management problems. And that’s why ATS’ team would teach our customer’s how to design out their heat sinks. Because we believe in innovations in thermal management that work. Understanding how to optimize air flow with your PCB works. Once  your optimization is set, then buy your heat sinks (hopefully from us!).

Can’t make our webinar? Then visit the following links to reach important resources on this topic:

A case study on removing heatsinks for better thermal management: ATS PCB Thermal Design Services Screencast

Many heat issues can be avoided or resolved when circuit board designs are optimized for thermal management. Optimizing PCBs for thermal management has been proven to ensure reliability, speed time to market and reduce overall costs.

ATS provides a range of PCB design services, from CFD studies on boards at the CAD stage to wind-tunnel testing of actual or dummy boards in conditions that simulate air distribution in actual applications.

In this 2:43 slidecast, we tell you how we do this and provide a case study on how one OEM actually removed heatsinks from their board to improve their thermal management:

In PCB Design for filled vias, should you use conductive or non-conductive thermal epoxy?

PCB Solutions, a provider of high quality circuit boards, has a great post on if conductive or non-conductive thermal epoxy should be used for PCB’s needing filled vias.   We’ve expounded on the benefits of including your PCB design and layout as part of your overall thermal management approach here at our blog.  It’s important to do so as including thermal management into those designs might even remove the need for  you to have heatsinks at all.

We’d highly recommend reading PCB Solution’s post, “Conductive vs. Non-Conductive Via Fill“.

LED Thermal Management Design: How to decide when it’s worth paying for the lower thermal impedance of an LED’s MCPCB’s dielectric?

EDN has a nice article write up on how to decide when it’s worth paying for the lower thermal impedance? Margery Conner, who covers LEDs, solid-state lighting, alternate energy sources, and sensors on her beat, notes the following in her trailer lead-in:

The thermal characteristics of the metal-clad pc-board (MCPCB) in LED lighting is becoming increasingly important. Back when LED packages had fairly poor thermal impedance numbers, the thermal characteristics of the MCPCB weren’t so important. But today’s packaged LEDs have increasingly good (low) thermal impedance numbers, and as the package’s thermal impedance drops, the thermal impedance of the MCPCB’s dielectric plays a bigger role.

The answer? Well according to Berquist’s Steve Taylor, quoted in EDN’s article, is to “making a quick calculation to determine the LED package’s normalized thermal impedance”. But that’s just the start. Go have a read for yourself to read the rest, it’s a great take and solution on good design for LED thermal management; Here’s the link, “Normalize LED package thermal impedance for optimum thermal design

LED Cooling Gets a Boost with Heraeus’ Stamped Circuit Board Technology but what about the cost?

Yesterday we noted that SinkPAD had announced their new technology to directly cool LED. And now Heraeus, out of Germany, has made an announcement about their Stamped Circuit Board Technology to cool LED.

Heraeus’s concept is uses a new PCB manufacturing technique to basically use the PCB as an LED heatsink. You can check the following link to read about Heraeus’s Stamped Circuit Board Technology. But the basic approach is one where:

Stamped Circuit Board (SCB) technology combines structured layers of metal and plastic for use in substrate assemblies, e. g. of LEDs. Similar to printed circuit boards, this layering may consist of fiberglass-reinforced epoxy resin and copper – however, the separate structuring of the two materials opens the way for totally new design concepts. During the manufacturing process both the plastic and the metal are initially treated on separate reels and structured according to the specific requirements involved. At the next stage, the materials undergo lamination after which they are left perfectly aligned to each other.

One question Heraeus’s concept and that of SinkPAD’s brings to mind is: cost.

With LED’s rapidly replacing standard lighting technologies, that already have economies of scale in manufacturing, cost is still an issue.

We certainly need new technologies in LED lighting. In fact, we here at ATS announced a new LED heatsink technology partnership with Lemnis lighting back in January of this year.  Our announcement noted the following breakthrough:

Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS), has partnered with Lemnis Lighting B.V. to develop cooling solutions that will enable the next generation of Lemnis’ Pharox LED bulbs to light at cool temperatures, produce a bright, uniform light output and provide a long lifespan. The innovation increases LED light performance by 15%, placing a feasible alternative for the 75W bulb within reach.

New technologies that solve the various challenges that LED’s present are going to cost more with the offset being longer life, better for the environment, and reduction in energy consumption. However, the crossover point has to be thought through where the cost becomes prohibitive regardless of how useful the technology may be.   Given costs of manufacturing and materials for some of the new technologies,  LED heatsinks made from Aluminum may prove to be the cheapest and most reliable choice of all.