Just bought a Smartfly iginition regulator, and having never owned one before, I was a little curious to see a gap between the heatsink and what I'm guessing is the regulator IC itself ?

Is this normal ? - doesn't make sense to me ?

Cheers,

Darren

Hi,
The copper on the PC board transmits the heat. On surface mount chips the back of the chip is where the die is mounted and transmits the heat out of the package. Since this is the mounting surface the heat travels out the copper to where the heatsink is soldered to the board. Surface mount is different than thru-hole components.