Hey Guys,I am going to install the motor heat sinks on my cx2.The LHS in my area don't carry the thermo paste that the manual says to use.Do you guys use it or not? Or maybe there is something else you use to glue them on.Please let me know as i am ready to take the ride to the hobby shop. Thanks

Several schools of thought but I agree with my LHS...........don't worry about it.........the physical contact is enough to dissipate heat! Now if it were a computer chip.......

Rikybob

I dont think the paste would make too much of a difference as rikybob says it might on a processor chip but with the extreme heat exchange on the motors i dont think it would make that much difference

My thoughts, If you are going to install a heatsink then you might as well do it right. Heatsink compound will increase/improve surface contact area and improve heat transfer. How much? well even if its not much its still a little and would never hurt. Someone made an artical on it and said that is does help reduce heat. I forgot how much and where that artical is. I use a heatsink on my Xtreme 180 motors with compound and they don't even get hot after 10 minutes of flight.
You can find thermo transfer grease or heatsink compound at places like radio shack or most computer stores.

In principal and in fact Rice is right. However, if you don't have any compound and you "take a notion" to put your heat sink on (mine had been in the box since I bought the copter as I was too afraid to disassemble the little bugger till the other day) it will and does perform adequatly without.

If proper planning takes place and you shelp to the Rat Shack, how much compound you wish to apply is a subject of much discussion I will submit thou, much like a computer chip (I used to assemble computers) veeeeeeeerrrry little does the job. You DO NOT need more than a small drop (size of a strawberry seed) in the middle of either side. I hope this helps.


Rikybob

Radio Shack has it.

Computer suppliers may. I got some on E-bay. The good stuff.

Don't put more than a papers thickness on the heatsink. Just a thin film. It will warm up and even itself out, but too much is not better.

speaking as someone who's been working as an electronics/computer technician for over 20 years, the amount of heatsink compound you use does make a difference.
Heatsink compound can't transfer heat as well as actual physical contact. It does transfer heat better than air.
What's going on is that no surface is perfectly smooth, so when you put two metal parts together, you have many little points of contact, with many little air gaps between.
The theory of using heat sink compound is that you just put on enough to barely cover the surfaces being combined, so that the compound doesn't prevent all the little spots from contacting that normally would with no compound on the parts. If you smear a heavy amount on, you're going to be holding the pieces apart, and actually slightly decrease the effectiveness of the heatsink, since it now has no actual points of metal to metal contact.
You're always better off with a heatsink than without one, no matter how well it's installed, but the heatsink will do its job better with a very minimal amount of heatsink compound on it.
I can site one example where someone had built themselves a computer with dual pentium processors that repeatedly locked up. The processors came with heatsinks pre-installed, but for some reason he'd removed the heatsink on one of them, then replaced it with a huge quantity of heatsink compound. You could easily feel the difference between the two heatsinks. The one he re-installed was barely warm, while the one that was installed at the factory was hot. In other words, it was drawing a lot more heat off its processor than the other one was.
The problem was cured by carefully cleaning all the goop off the heatsink and the chip with denatured ethyl alchohol and a lint free swap, then reapplying the correct amount of compound.

To sum up; you're best off with a heatsink that's installed with a minimal amount of compound, 2nd best is a heatsink with no compound, 3rd is a heatsink with too much compound, and last, no heatsink.

(What he said)

r/b

Caponerd,

Were You replying to Me?

Where did I say that it doesn't make any difference?

I said a thin film. . . I'm confused.

I had to re-read my post.

Gary

What is the purpose of the heat sink?

To dissipate the nuclear like heat produced by the lil' motors spinnin' that little helo into the stratosphere...........


r/b

Sorry, I wasn't replying to any specific comment, it was just a way of leading into my thesis on heatsink theory. Now I have to go re-read my own post to make sure I didn't accidentally click the "quote" button when I started my reply.