Thermal paste

What kind of thermal paste do you use? I recently bought artic silver 5, after read raving reviews about it. But it takes too long to cure. I let it set for 24 hrs. and it still not cured.

The artic silver 5 does not get hard if that is what you are asking……you will have to use a thermal adhesive of some sort if you want the stuff to harden.

If you want glue I can recommend the Stars 922 thermal glue.
I use it to glue COB LEDs to aluminium heatsinks and it works like a charm: cures after a day and is relativley easy to remove if you made an error.
I could not even guess the thermal conductivity, but in my logic the thin layer does not even matter in thermal transfer.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261967811200

What about this one?

That stuff would be fine for low amp draw but if your going to be pushing over one amp you'll probably be better off getting the arctic Silver thermal adhesive. it's a 2-part epoxy. it will set in about 10-15 min depending on temp. 75% cure in probably 6 hrs.

I use MX-4, but in the future I might switch to coollaboratory liquid ultra because liquid metal performs a lot better than regular thermal pastes.
Also, thermal paste like AS5 or MX-4 is not supposed to cure. Dried up thermal paste = bad performance.

Ain’t supposta. I use AS5 all the time. Needs a few hot/cold cycles to really get into its groove (burning off volatiles), but after that, it’s supposta stay fluid.

If you want something to “cure”, use a 2-part epoxy/adhesive, but consider that permanent. As in you’ll have to dremel off the part and leftover epoxy to get it off.

Fujik is good for when you need something rubbery to “stick” a star to a pill, ferinstance. But it isn’t as effective as AS5.

Great middle-ground between performance and permanence.

Eg, I need to mount small resistors between taillamp assy and car body to fix so-called “hyperflash” after replacing hotwire bulbs with LEDs. No way am I going to epoxy it into place, and AS5 would let it just slide off after a while. Fujik will keep it in-place but only semi-permanently.

So which you use (goop/epoxy/caulk) depends on your application.

Darn. Lol. Bought the wrong stuff

Some people use AS-5 or other paste under and adhesive at the edge. This gives a high performance thermal bond that is fixed yet easier to remove than adhesive alone.

+1 for that
I used Arctic silver 5 in the middle of my Convoy S2+ and Eagle Eye X2R and arctic silver 2 component on the edges

Liquid metal is not good on aluminum as it corrodes it

In the next days I get special solder that is advertized that it can be soldered on aluminum, that should be the best heat transfer possible
Soldered star to brass pill shows how good it is as it gets a lot harder to solder the wires back on the star

That’s fine. Just send me your leftover AS5. I’ll give it a good home. :smiley:

Are you talking about Stannol ALUSOL? I’m really interessted in the results.

SRA soldering products has this Al26-181-75 aluminum to aluminum, aluminum-copper soldering paste. Melts at 217C(423F)

The best thermal paste at the moment is “thermal grizzly” and not Arctic Silver 5! :person_facepalming:

Kinda spendy, though, for marginal benefit (a couple of °C).

If you need the absolute best, by all means. But wow, I got sticker-shock the first time I priced TG.

I’ve had good results myself using Arctic Silver Ceramique 2.

Normally I use MX-4 unless I need something for a super special applications, MX-4 has a great balance of performance and price. Also use a gallium alloy TIM when I can. If I recall pastes normally work better than epoxies given a good level of pressure. Pressure is often just as important as the TIM you use.

Yup, I would highly recommend using a thermal paste + screws rather than a thermal epoxy.
Better performance, easier to swap out LEDs, and less damage.

I will get tomorrow most likely my aluminum solder stuff
If it works like this I will solder stars to aluminum head

The flux residue has to be removed with water as it is corrosive

Well, when trying to solder it to something that is intended to be a heatsink it will be really hard to get it to melt…
Make sure you have a 60W or more soldering iron and remove all drivers/o-rings/plastic from the light before you heat it up to 200C+
Since a flashlight is built like a heatsink, getting the head to 200C will probably make the rest of the body sit at over 100C.