Grizz, I appreciate the crafstmanship and the work you've put in so far but I see a potential problem with the fabrication of your heatsink; with the fins only being tacked a few times there will be barely any thermal transfer between the main plate and the fin. A continuous weld would have been much more effective (or atleast a heavier stich-weld) Do you have any plans to solder/braze the joint between the fin and the plate? If not perhaps using thermal adhesive would have been more effective? Simply having the fin touching the plate (probably a bit of a gap now due to warp and drift from the welds) will not be much better than simply a bare plate.
On a somewhat related note, if you can build a plenum to spread the air from the cooling fans across all the fins they would be much more effective, rather than just cooling the four or five channels directly below the fans.
I really don't want to rain on the parade, just trying to help prevent burning up some expensive LEDs after the plate soaks up all the heat it can and reaches critical temp.
Edit: I just re-read and see that you plan to solder the fins in place. Looks like you've got it covered!
Last edited by jostafew; 12-13-2011 at 03:09 AM.
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