Black Heatsinks
 

Have a look in the store folks, Mike is now selling XL clamp/heatsinks in black!

Is that type II or type III anodizing?

could you explain type's of anodizing?
thank you, mike.

Err, it's the black type.

no i mean type 2 or type 3.

Cool! Black heatsinks. I wonder if they'll cool better (black body radiation)?

Can someone post a link to it? I can't find it.:002:

I can confirm they do in fact work better. how much of course depends on what's around them.

XL Black Heat Sink

You have to bring up the drop-down list (last option)...

Type III is hard anodizing, like they use on military stuff and the green Surefire flashlights. Type II is not as tough and will wear away more quickly, it's used on Maglites. Type II is probably the most common, since you can get it in lots of different colors.

The thing I don't like about anodizing is that it gets dinged up, sooner or later and then it looks like crap. Type III is just a lot less likely to get dinged up.

For a heat sink I'm guessing the dings will be limited. And one could always grab the trusty sharpie out of his sock to hide the dings :)

Thats so funny cadima.

Thanks for the link Brian.

OK, I forgot about the sharpie trick.

I don't know about color helping with the heat dissipation, but I'm wondering if the relatively rough surface of the anodizing will inhibit the conduction of heat from the motor to the sink. As it is, there is already the hurdle of the anodizing on the motor can.

In any case, the black heatsink would look cool.

IIRC, anodizing is a molecular plating of sorts, so it should provide little to no barrier to heat transfer. It's not like it was powder coated or painted. As to the rough surfaces, I suppose you could wet sand the inside of the sink to remove the anodizing there, but I personally wouldn't. I think a little heatsink compound when installing it will help greatly in heat transfter - just don't get the cheap stuff as it's kinda oily because it'll ooze. I'd use something like Ceramique, which is a thicker paste.

Yeah, IIRC, anodizing is just a form of oxidation, if that's the right word to use. I had looked into a home anodizing kit some time ago. All it consisted of is some chemicals, a bunch of buckets, and electrodes to pass an electric current through one of the solutions. I do know that lye gets it off PDQ. LOL.

I'm sure that the use of a quality thermal compound would help a lot. I only mentioned it because I had problems with all of my monster heat sinks in that the motor was always a lot hotter than the sink after a run. It turned out that the sinks were only contacting about 1/4 of the surface area of the motor that they should have. I had to do some sanding before I got a good clean contact and good thermal conductivity. Now, my sinks heat up with the motors.

I'm just asking questions. All in all, I like anodizing. It acts as an electrical insulator and could save the day in some situations.