Cooling a voltage regulator

[crazedmodder]

I'm working on another LED project and I'm using a voltage regulator (LM317T) as a current regulator. Now I have it working but the regulator gets extremely hot during a mere 15 seconds (enough to burn me). This is with a TO-220 heatsink on it. So I was wondering what is the best way to cool it without the use of something that takes plenty of space (IE: no fans). I was thinking maybe ramsinks but I was hoping to find something maybe a little cheaper.

They are regulating a maximum of 15V down to 600mA (and around 6.2V).

[Ashers]

What about a "bus bar" style cooling? Massive amounts of metal will cool anything...

[Zero102]

Bigger regulator and screw it to a heatsink
Take apart an old power supply and get one of the wide finned ones :)

[Alterac]

add some thermal compound between the regulator and sink also.

[The Cosworth]

Yeah get some fin style heatsinks, and put some arctic silver on it and it should be good to go

[alloroc]

Immerse the whole works in vegetable oil?

[Cooked Rice]

Use a resistor and make sure it can disperse enough of the power. It will be rated in max. wattage it can handle/disperse.

[crazedmodder]

Busbar... I like the idea but I don't know if I have the space to give it a useful surface area.

I think I will canabalize older stuff. I didn't realize until you said it but I've got a decommissioned P1 (+northbridge hs), shit celeron (+Northbridge HS) and two powersupplies.

I might try the vegetable oil thing first as I remember reading something about a guy cooling his PC with that a year or so back. The only thing I'm wondering about is the fact that it would be in a small case and have no flow.

Oh and by resistor, do you mean drop the current as much as possible before the regulator so that the heat gets dissipated by a large wattage resistor instead?

Thanks for the ideas guys :D

[Supa Dexta]

put it in a plastic bag and submerse in water...?




... what I heard it works for game consoles...

:rofl:

[Spike_16v]

Are you sure you are not shorting or have low impedance between V+ and GND.
The only reason it would be to hot to touch are shorting/low Z or too much current draw.

[crazedmodder]

Seems to make sense that at 9W it's heating up a lot. These are the sinks I'm using now:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Thermalloy-TO-220-Heatsink-w-mount-screw-25-pieces-NEW_W0QQitemZ300141194835QQcmdZViewItem

Not so great just a standard cheap TO-220 heatsink. I'll still check for shorts though, my LEDs were working though :D.

[kamatayan]

7805 or 7815 Regulator maybe... .. .