Design Brief
This Design Project requires you to design a passive Heat Sink for attachment to a computer CPU expected to run at a maximum of 100° C.
The bounding box of the Heat Sink is 40x40x40 mm3 and it will be 3D printed using Aluminium (Elementum 3D Al6061 – RAM2). Download the datasheet here.
The objective of the design is to achieve a Heat Sink that is more efficient in heat extraction than the provided Finned Heat Sink below … part of the design will be to prove that this has been achieved by comparing a simulation of each.

The CPU can, for the purposes of this design, be assumed to be a flat plate of dimensions 60x60x2 mm3 with a surface temperature of 100° C to simulate an intensive loading scenario on the CPU.
The winners …
The three winning designs will be 3D printed on Akhani 3D’s EOS M 290 Metal 3D printer in Aluminium.
Need some inspiration?
There are a few visual ideas on this page …
This article details a heat exchanger project using 3D printing …


