Make Your Own Heat Sink Today!

The main function of heat sink is to absorb and dissipate as many heats as it can from another object, by using thermal contact, where it can be either direct or radiant. Heat sinks are being used in a wide range of applications, wherever the efficient heat dissipation is needed. Many household electrical appliances contain heat sinks, such as refrigerator, cooling electronic devices and the central processing unit (CPU)!

Practically, heat sinks function by transfer thermal energy, or it also known as "heat" from an object at a relatively high temperature to a second object at a lower temperature with a much greater heat capacity.

For this project, you'll need six pennies and six LM317s as 0.125 A current sources propped up by silicon diodes.

When you refer to the above picture, you can see there are six pennies has been bolted together in a fan configuration. Although it takes up a lot of space, but it can reduce as much as 19°C than by using only single penny in the fan configuration!

Before you apply the pennies into the heat sink, you should clean all the pennies in an acid bath to remove dirt and corrosion. After it, you can flush the acid off with tap water.