ACT's Engineering Products & Services Group specializes in thermal product design, qualification and manufacture. This Group is leading the way in heat pipes and related products and services for commercial and military applications, including ruggedized military electronics, UAVs, radar, telecom, satcom and embedded computing. A few of our standard products include:
Commercial and military thermal management systems each have unique operating environments, life cycles and cost requirements. To guarantee quality and reliability, ACT has done extensive testing on our heat pipe products, including high acceleration, shock, vibration, and frozen startup. ACT distinguishes itself from the competition by offering the most capable and reliable heat pipes. ACT's Heat Pipe Product Reliability Guide offers more detailed information on this subject.
Contact a member of our team to discuss how we can become your partner in commercial or military thermal management, or continue reading below to find out more about our trusted commercial and military thermal management solutions.
Heat Pipe Assemblies
ACT integrates both ready-made and custom-designed heat pipes into a variety of high performance heat sink assemblies, for a wide variety of customers and applications. Heat pipes are passive high conductivity two phase heat transfer devices, which provide significant thermal benefits to cooling of high power, high density electronics systems.
Following are a few ways ACT partners with our customers to design, develop and manufacture custom heat sink assemblies for challenging thermal applications. Please contact us for applications not shown below, or click on the link at the end of the section for additional information about heat pipe assemblies.
Typical applications:
- Ship board electronics
- Line replaceable modules
- VME systems
- Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
- Armored vehicles
- RF amplifiers
- Radar electronics
- Transmitter/receiver modules
Benefits include:
- Decreased junction temperatures
- Increased packaging density and flexibility
- Uniform device temperatures
- Higher allowable operating ambient conditions
- Lighter weight assemblies
HiK Plates
A leader in the category, ACT designed and manufactured HiK plates are aluminum or aluminum silicon carbide (AlSiC) heat spreaders having embedded heat pipes for enhanced heat spreading and transport. The effective thermal conductivity varies with the layout of the embedded heat pipes, but are at least several factors higher than the traditional aluminum, AlSiC and copper heat spreaders.
Here are photos of ACT's HiK Plates for two specific applications. Contact us to speak with an ACT representative about your specific application, or click on the link below for more information about HiK plates. Our HiK plates are ideal for providing thin efficient spreading in a variety of thermal applications including:
Typical applications:
- IGBT heat spreaders
- Antenna enclosures
- Combined structural and thermal components
- Microprocessor heat spreaders/sinks
- High power lasers and LEDs
- Replacement of traditional conduction plates in VITA and VME standard products
Benefits include:
- Thin, low-profile heat spreaders
- Easily customizable for board and device mounting
- Improved performance over traditional metallic conduction
- Decreased cost over high end composite heat spreaders
- Can be CTE matched for direct die attachment
Power Electronics Cooling
ACT has worked on numerous applications that involve the spreading and dissipating of highly concentrated heat fluxes involved in power electronics. To increase performance, ACT can effectively spread heat, design efficient dissipation techniques, and provide seamless integration into your system. These solutions provide highly reliable, lightweight systems which can operate free of maintenance.
Seen to the right are photos of ACT's natural convection heat sink with embedded heat pipes. Contact us to speak with an ACT representative about your specific application, or click on the link below for more information about power electronics cooling products. Our enhanced heat sinks are ideal for providing an maximum fin dissipation by isothermalizing the base and optimizing fin size and pitch
Typical applications:
- IGBTs
- SCRs
- Thyristors
- IPMs
Benefits include:
- Optimized Fin Design
- Geometric Flexibility
- Low Thermal Resistance
- Higher Allowable Power
Vapor Chamber Assemblies
Vapor chambers are flat, thin heat pipes that are typically used as heat spreaders for cooling of high power, high heat flux electronics. ACT manufactures vapor chambers in house, the figure to the right shows the components of a vapor chamber fin stack
Typical applications:
- High power CPUs and GPUs
- High power military electronics
- RF amplifiers
- Power converters
- T/R modules
Benefits include:
- Effective thermal conductivity can be orders of magnitude greater than copper spreaders
- Direction independent (isotropic) heat spreading
- Lighter than equivalent size copper spreaders
