{"id":10306,"date":"2016-11-12T15:55:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-12T04:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2016\/11\/12\/putting-a-heatsink-on-the-bitx40-module\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T04:12:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:12:15","slug":"putting-a-heatsink-on-the-bitx40-module","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2016\/11\/12\/putting-a-heatsink-on-the-bitx40-module\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting a Heatsink on the BITX40 Module"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

The fan that I installed yesterday was driving me nuts. It was noisy, both acoustically and electrically. And I would occasionally get my fingers in the blades. Not good. While it did seem to keep the IRF510 from getting too hot, I knew that a real heatsink would do better thermally. <\/b>

<\/b> But how was I going to attach the sink to the transistor? That tab on the IRF510 goes to the collector, so if it touches a grounded heat sink, you get a short. A nylon screw and some mylar between the transistor tab and the heat sink is one option. But I didn’t have a nylon screw. So I decided to just keep the heat sink electrically insulated from the chassis. <\/b>

<\/b> This project required me to refresh my memory on how to tap a 4-40 hole. I went back and watched the short video<\/a> I made on the tribal knowledge that Pete had shared with me. Out came the Tap and Die gear and the machine oil. The process went very smoothly.<\/b>

<\/b> Here is what I did to get the heatsink in place: <\/b>

<\/b> 1) After removing the original heatsink, I gently bent the leads on the IRF510 so that the transistors outer edge would be flush with the edge of the PC board. <\/b>
2) I put a strip of thick tape (Gorilla Tape) along the lower side of the heat sink. This will keep the heat sink from shorting to the chassis. <\/b>
3) I placed the heatsink where I wanted it, and carefully marked where the mounting screw (through the transistor’s tab) should go. <\/b>
4) Drill! Tap! (see video)<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LuqliWT1k5A<\/a><\/b>
5) I applied some heat sink compound (or Desitin!) and then attached the transistor to the heatsink. <\/b>
6) I put a few drops of glue between the heatsink and the board and the chassis, just to mechanically stabilize it a bit. <\/b>
7) Bob’s your uncle. <\/b>

<\/b> It seems to work great. The MOSFET stays cool. even after long “old buzzard” transmissions. And I notice no stability problems. It was fun to put to use some tribal knowledge and refresh a mechanical skill. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fan that I installed yesterday was driving me nuts. It was noisy, both acoustically and electrically. And I would occasionally get my fingers in the blades. Not good. While it did seem to keep the IRF510 from getting too hot, I knew that a real heatsink would do better thermally. But how was I … Continue reading “Putting a Heatsink on the BITX40 Module”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amplifier-theory","category-bitx40module"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10308,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10306\/revisions\/10308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}