Choosing the right heat sink for RFID reader

Hello people!

I have a working SparkFun Simultaneous RFID Reader - M6E Nano along with an Arduino Uno.

As mentioned in the thermal considerations of their hardware hookup guide, without a heat sink this reader can work for tens of minutes at full power. I plan to use this continuously for a long period of time (approximately 8 hours non-stop).

How do I find a heat sink for this? On which side of the board do I mount it? Should I keep the Thermal Gap Filler it came with?

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

You just need a heatsink the size of the board which they provide. Typically, the heat sink sits right on top of the reader chip (with a big dab of the thermal compound). You will have to make sure you have holes in the proper place to attach it to the shield. You may have to drill these yourself. As a starter, you can just cut a piece of aluminum to size, drill the holes and mount that. It doesn't have as much surface area as a heat sink with fins, but may be sufficient

Thank you so much for the reply.

Just to make sure I have correctly understood what you saying, I should fix an aluminium plate on top of the chip with thermal compound in between, right?

Thanks in advance!

Yep!