Radian Heatsinks

Custom Heatsink

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Custom Heatsink

Custom Heatsink Solutions By Radian

A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work when it comes to cooling electronic devices. Every electronic device’s size, power requirements, and thermal characteristics are unique. This is where custom heatsinks come into play.

A custom heatsink is designed to your device’s specifications, ensuring optimal thermal management. By considering factors such as the device’s power dissipation, airflow, and space constraints, we can create a heatsink that maximizes heat dissipation and minimizes the risk of overheating.

With our depth of expertise, we excel in custom heatsink manufacturing. We collaborate closely with our clients to understand their distinct requirements and precisely manufacture customized heatsinks that uniquely fit their devices. Whether you need a heatsink for a computer processor, power electronics, or any other application, we have the expertise to deliver exceptional results.

What is a Custom Heatsink?

Components can overheat and malfunction without proper cooling, leading to costly repairs or complete failures. Custom-designed heatsinks are specifically designed to fit the unique needs of a particular device or application. They can be made from various materials, including aluminum and copper. They can be designed in various shapes and sizes to fit even the most complex electronic systems.

Radian Thermal Products can use one of our wide range of standard heatsinks, and then modify to meet the thermal application requirements. Customizing a standard heatsink helps reduce a heatsink cost, and also can reduce the prototype time dramatically. For larger heatsinks, we can also look an existing extrusion before it has been cut for a standard heatsink. Where a standard heatsink can not be modified, our engineering team will then design a custom heatsink solution using the most appropriate manufacturing process.

Benefits of Working with Radian

As a custom heatsink manufacturer, we pride ourselves on providing our clients with the highest-quality cooling solutions. We ensure that our heatsinks are durable, reliable, and effective. We work closely with our clients throughout the design and manufacturing process to ensure that their needs are met and that the final product is exactly what they need.

Working with a custom heatsink manufacturer is the best way to ensure you get the best possible cooling solution. By partnering with us, you can rest assured that your electronic components will be protected from overheating and that your device will perform at its best for years.

Custom Heatsink Design

At the start of a custom heatsink design, the engineering team will discuss the following design parameters with the customer:

Available volume (length, width & height) for the heatsink assembly including the component to be thermally managed
Component power dissipation
Direction of Air Flow
Maximum permissible Operating Case or Junction Temperature
Local Ambient Temperature
Preferred heatsink attachment method (Clip, Push-fit, etc.)
Understand customer’s TIM (Thermal Interface Material) requirements
Estimated Annual Usage & budget

Engineering Services

Our Engineers here at Radian will work with you on feasibility evaluation at no cost. Our team provides custom designs from simple extrusions to complex 2-phase integration. Our goal is to get you and your team situated with a solution that brings confidence along with quality. Radian’s team assures support for every step of the way.

1. Thermal Simulation
2. Feasibility study
3. Modeling/Drafting
4. Proto Evaluation

5. Re-spins
6. Production
7. Sustaining

Extruded heatsink with integrated copper heat-pipes and pedestal

Heat-pipe integrated radiator

Vapor Chamber fansink

Custom Heatsink Types

With this information, Radian Thermal Products can then work with your team to select the best custom heatsink option for your thermal application.

Heat-Pipe Custom Heatsink

A typical heat pipe consists of a vacuum sealed pipe or tube made of a material that is compatible with the working fluid such as copper for water heat pipes. Heat pipes transport heat away from the power source allowing the heat to be dissipated in a less critical area of the enclosure via a heatsink.

Vapor Chamber Custom Heatsink

A Vapor Chamber is essentially a planar heat-pipe spreading heat rapidly within its envelope. This high-end technology essentially allows the base of the heatsink to be isothermal. Optimum when point heat source is smaller than area of vapor chamber base.

Machined Custom Heatsink

A machined custom heatsink uses Radian’s highly versatile machining capabilities. With low set-up costs, machined custom heatsinks are ideal for low to medium volumes. Radian provides high precision machined heatsinks with complex features, contours, cut-outs and through-holes.

Extruded Custom Heatsink

Aluminum Extrusions have conventionally been the predominant approach for low cost custom heatsink production.

Casted Custom Heatsink

Investment Casting is a cost-effective manufacturing process, ideally suited to complex custom heatsink designs, for prototyping and short to medium volume production runs.

Diecast Custom Heatsink

Aluminum Die-casting {thermal conductivity ~ 160 W/(mK)} offers a cost-effective solution for medium to large volume heatsink manufacture.

Forged Custom Heatsink

Forged custom heatsinks can be manufactured using special open die tooling and intense pressure to form thin-sectioned, high precision heatsinks. High aspect ratios can be achieved using Precision Forging.

Skived Custom Heatsink

A Skived custom heatsink combines special cutting tools and a controlled shaving technique to produce a densely, thin finned heatsink from a single block of material, such as copper or aluminum.

Stamped Fin Custom Heatsink

A Stamped Fin custom heatsink is made from sheets of aluminum or copper, where the metal is stamped into a particular configuration based on the intended application. For maximum design flexibility, fins can be stamped into a broad range of geometries and thicknesses. A stamped Fin custom heatsink is a useful approach for medium to high volume production.

Design Process

The design team at Radian will discuss the points of detail with the customer to ensure that all aspects of the design are covered, from feasibility to detailed design.

The initial feasibility work includes thermal simulation using SolidWorks Flow Simulation to optimise the solution from concept layout to final design. This work could also include a full system level simulation, of the customer’s enclosure, to ensure no component is adversely effected by a specific heatsink design.

Our team also provide budgetary costs for prototype and production forecasts for all heatsink solutions offered.

Rapid Prototyping

Radian uses Rapid Prototyping techniques, such as CNC Machining in its US based machine shop, to assess the heatsink design for both physical and thermal performance, producing parts ready to ship in 1-2 weeks, prior to the customer committing to the cost of hard tooling.

Radian’s overseas facilities can produce vapor chambers, heat-pipes, and many of the heatsink types at significantly reduced lead-times compared to production parts. This supports the customer to expedite the time to market & meet reduced timelines where required.

Telecommunications

Medical

Military

Applications

Radian offers a wide range of industrial experience in; telecommunications, medical, military, indoor enclosures & ruggedized outdoor base-stations. Our experience and knowledge of system design allow us to understand our customer’s needs and build positive working relationships into the future.

Custom Heatsink Examples

The majority of Radian’s business is in the design, development and manufacturing of custom heatsinks for OEM applications. A large part of this work is in the Thermal Anaysis of customer projects.

Copper Heat Pipe Heatsink Assembly for High Brightness LED Application

Our customer was designing a substantially large High Brightness LED Assembly needing to dissipate substantial amount of heat to increase brightness and extend the life of their lighting fixture.

Utilizing advanced thermal analysis techniques, we were able to develop a solution utilizing copper heat pipes embedded in the base of the heatsink to more effectively draw heat from the LEDs and distribute throughout the heatsink fins. The end result eliminates hot spots with even distribution of heat across all the plate fins.

Custom Heatsink Designed for Extra Cooling

Late in the design stages for a networking customer, the customer miscalculated the amount of heat they would need to dissipate. Having already spun and stuffed their boards, the customer had designed their boards to use our standard BGA Heatsinks with EZ-Snap Mounting Clips. They now required additional heatsink fins, yet had no method available to mount a larger heatsink without re-spinning and re-stuffing all their boards.

To solve the customer’s dilemma, Radian quickly designed and manufactured an extended BGA Heatsink that provided the extra heatsink fins required, while still using the same EZ-Snap Mounting Clip. This approach solved the problem, saving the customer the customer the extensive costs and time required to re-spin and stuff their boards.

Radian provided the solution without NRE and at costs only slightly higher than the standard BGA Heatsinks, keeping the client on schedule and on budget for the release of their system.

Copper Custom Heatsink with Vapor Chamber and Stamped Fins

Radian Thermal Products developed this Copper custom heatsink that included a vapor chamber to cool a 103 Watt BGA chip. This Vapor chamber heatsink has a custom shape to fit the customer’s board design. The Vapor chamber is embedded with stamped copper fins to dissipate the heat. Threaded mounting inserts affix the solution with the ideal pressure to mate the solution to the BGA chip.

Double-Sided Copper Skived Heatsink

The application was for a high end-processor card that was to mechanically fit within a 2.5 inch hard-drive slot. The minimal space allowed for minimal height and required the higher dissipation rate offer by copper and skived fins. We mounted heatsinks on both the top and bottom of the board to maximize heat dissipation.

Copper Heatsink for a Laser Diode in Optical Communications

Laser diode operating characteristics and life time are greatly affected by the temperature of the semiconductor junction. This is particularly true for the high power laser diode used by Radian’s customer where several watts of waste heat had to be removed from the small semiconductor laser chip. The round shape of Radian’s copper heatsink was tailored to best fit the the laser for improved thermal contact with the heat sink. The compact fin design provides optimal thermal dissipation. At ambient temperatures of 25°C, this passive device holds the laser under 50°C.

Copper Skived Heatsink with Blower for 1U Server

The customer had an absolute limit on theta_SA of 0.6 C/W and the power to cool being 50 W. Radian provided a heatsink / blower solution with a theta_SA of only 0.52 C/W consisting of a copper skived heatsink with customized mounting and attached blower with speed control.

Copper Vapor Chambers in a Two-Sided Stamped Copper Heatsink

The customer required an advanced cooling solution to support a servo motor drive application. Radian came up with an enclosure that sandwiches the servo motor with copper vapor chamber on each side. Each copper vapor chamber is populated with stamped copper fins. The vapor chamber provide the best method to draw heat from hot-spots on the servo motor and then evenly distribute the heat into the heatsink fins.

Diecast Heatsink with Copper Heat Pipe for Encoder Card

We transitioned customer from an Extruded Aluminum Heatsink with secondary cuts and drills to a DieCast Heatsink design for reduced costs in higher volumes. New part has a copper heatpipe embedded in the base to improve thermal performance.