DIY with Quantum Boards

Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Boatguy said:
It really doesnt work that way.
The slate 2 dissipates heat very quickly, more so if you have good air movement in your space. The 1/4" aluminum plate would actually make the panels hotter than without. I know it doesnt sound right, but the limitation is the surface area on slate 2.
It doesnt magically dissipate more heat because there is more aluminum there.

I did use thermal adhesive pads between the sinks and boards because i was planning on running them hard. The slate 2's arent super flat so it's not 100% contact there without some kind of thermal product to fill the gaps
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Alu sheet make quite good sinking in my experience, a little lip around any boards and if you have enough sheet for common sense board placement then ive had no problem with it. I usually use 3 mm. The trick is to not cover your sheet completely and run it mid power, i like around 80w per board personally for a good compromise on hang height, spread, spacing. If you have easy access it works really well. It kinda depends on how shipping works out; im allways buying over seas and a bit leary on shipping heatsinks; with cheaper boards it almost allways makes more sense to me to change a sink for another board and just get some sheet for like 15$ around where i live and spread watts out over more board.each to their own situation. Another good thing is that the lip gives you soace for monos or strips if you like to mod further
 
sfw1960

sfw1960

Well-Known Member
Agreeing with Rocket Soul,
In my experience it's NOT just the thickness of the aluminum and surface area - it's total mass also.
You have to be able to maintain the temperature of any sinking device or you can experience thermal runaway. Feeling the frames on these QB288's or the heatsinks I've added to the QB132's is telling.
(:

Boatguy,
I've been dabbling with electronics for the better part of forty years including a tenure at a FCC certified communications electronics repair shop.
I've found putting the sinks on a plate will indeed cool better and even have had discussions about electronic theory and what actually occurred in real time tests.
While it's true a thinner plate will draw and cool faster - once the mass has reached it's thermal limitations, the "full line" if you will it can no longer keep the temperature in line without runaway.
(Also the reason you see poorly designed "active cooling" on many asian light fixtures.)

If you were to take a Slate 2 single and make an copy of the extrusion with the same X&Y dimensions and increase the (Z axis) plate thickness to say, 10mm and even maintain the same fin height (but would also readily benefit from taller fins [mass & surface area] you would see an increase in dissipation) and more power handling.

I certainly agree on getting better transfer from a TIM though I'm not a fan of thermal pads myself - they do work decent and are tons less messy than a good paste which I used on a sunboard strip build and it's under the meanwell drivers remotely mounted to larger extrusions bolted to the joists which are barely above ambient without adding any heatsinks to the cases.

I'd be interested in where your findings have originated though.

I once helped a student with a final project of a very large stereo amplifier and he preached the formulas and theory of the teachings adamantly yet after returning from the lab he couldn't explain why the power output was so much higher than what the charts, graphs and formulas (and myself) told him.
He had problems with thermals in the bias circuitry and IDK if he ever solved them but I know he warped a voice coil in a midrange driver in one of my speakers when we were testing the power output it "wasn't" capable of.lol
He did get an excellent grade though!
 
Boatguy

Boatguy

Well-Known Member
sfw1960 said:
Agreeing with Rocket Soul,
In my experience it's NOT just the thickness of the aluminum and surface area - it's total mass also.
You have to be able to maintain the temperature of any sinking device or you can experience thermal runaway. Feeling the frames on these QB288's or the heatsinks I've added to the QB132's is telling.
(:

Boatguy,
I've been dabbling with electronics for the better part of forty years including a tenure at a FCC certified communications electronics repair shop.
I've found putting the sinks on a plate will indeed cool better and even have had discussions about electronic theory and what actually occurred in real time tests.
While it's true a thinner plate will draw and cool faster - once the mass has reached it's thermal limitations, the "full line" if you will it can no longer keep the temperature in line without runaway.
(Also the reason you see poorly designed "active cooling" on many asian light fixtures.)

If you were to take a Slate 2 single and make an copy of the extrusion with the same X&Y dimensions and increase the (Z axis) plate thickness to say, 10mm and even maintain the same fin height (but would also readily benefit from taller fins [mass & surface area] you would see an increase in dissipation) and more power handling.

I certainly agree on getting better transfer from a TIM though I'm not a fan of thermal pads myself - they do work decent and are tons less messy than a good paste which I used on a sunboard strip build and it's under the meanwell drivers remotely mounted to larger extrusions bolted to the joists which are barely above ambient without adding any heatsinks to the cases.

I'd be interested in where your findings have originated though.

I once helped a student with a final project of a very large stereo amplifier and he preached the formulas and theory of the teachings adamantly yet after returning from the lab he couldn't explain why the power output was so much higher than what the charts, graphs and formulas (and myself) told him.
He had problems with thermals in the bias circuitry and IDK if he ever solved them but I know he warped a voice coil in a midrange driver in one of my speakers when we were testing the power output it "wasn't" capable of.lol
He did get an excellent grade though!
Click to expand...
It isnt really a "finding". What i noticed is that with my early boards using extrusions from heatsinks usa, they seemed to be much hotter than what i see now on the thinner slate 2 style sinks.
I think @Rocket Soul misunderstood what i was saying earlier and thought i was saying flat aluminum plate was inadequate, when what i was really saying is that the slate 2 likely doesnt have the surface area to compensate for another piece of 1/4" aluminum between it and the board. Flat aluminum plate works for sure, you just need to be sure its sized right
 
S

sd1779

Well-Known Member
Quick question for you guys. What’s the longest power cord I could safely use? I don’t want to put anything else on the circuit that I’m using. Could I use a 20 foot extension cord with the end cut off and wire in? The drivers are 2 hlg240 2100a.
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
sd1779 said:
Quick question for you guys. What’s the longest power cord I could safely use? I don’t want to put anything else on the circuit that I’m using. Could I use a 20 foot extension cord with the end cut off and wire in? The drivers are 2 hlg240 2100a.
Click to expand...
On ac side or dc side?
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
sd1779 said:
Ac
Click to expand...
As long as its rated for the watts you should be fine. Most extensions have a higher rating so you should be fine.
For switching the lights: most standard fuses/electrical installations can the inrush current of 2 drivers switching on at the same time but if the circuit is already handling a lot of watts you may wanna use 2 separate timers. How to know? Your fuses trip when the timer switches on. If so, 2 timers.
 
S

sd1779

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
As long as its rated for the watts you should be fine. Most extensions have a higher rating so you should be fine.
For switching the lights: most standard fuses/electrical installations can the inrush current of 2 drivers switching on at the same time but if the circuit is already handling a lot of watts you may wanna use 2 separate timers. How to know? Your fuses trip when the timer switches on. If so, 2 timers.
Click to expand...
Appreciate you
 
sfw1960

sfw1960

Well-Known Member
Those are Sofa King awesome - HLG says you need at least 18" over the top of them but yours are higher up than my V1 - 288s.
I'm probably 6-8” from the frame.
That channel is nice, wish I could find some of aluminum like it but it's gotta be OMG expensive...
I might just pop some low RPM 120mm fans on them and see if I can put them even higher, like yours. Maybe just an "S" hook on each corner might be decent...
:eyesmoke:

Sweet rig and it brings the dank for you!
 
2

2com

Well-Known Member
Sofa King Smoooth said:
View attachment 5349668View attachment 5349670View attachment 5349671
Assembled these from last year's black friday sale. Have barely gotten them above idle, even during flower. They are my new favorite.

Surprisingly they are significantly lighter than they look, mostly because the drivers are not mounted on the lights
Click to expand...
Very cool. Looks good.
Edit: Is there flex/wiggle in the heatsinks the way they're attached to the slotted angle iron? Like, there's no "end rails" on those side rails of angle iron, right?
 
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