rather creative heatsink clamp!

[TheMG]

Opened up a power supply for repair and saw something I've never seen anywhere else before!



Yes, that's part of a "binder clip" or "bulldog clip" (whatever you like to call it). These things:



Anybody else seen these clips used in such a way?

[Kim Christensen]

I have used them to temporarily clip heatsinks to transistors while breadboarding or running some tests.

Usually in commercial gear you see something like these:

[SeanB]

Well, it works, and, due to them being made by the millions, is cheap, so the Chinese OEM used them, just took the wire clips off, and sold those as scrap metal.

[shakalnokturn]

No, never seen that before.
It's funny if they tried to cut the costs with that clamp, the rest of the PSU doesn't look like a cheap piss-poor design.

[Haenk]

clever idea - as they bring their own "application device" to install it properly - absolutely thumbs up

[TheMG]

Well, it works, and, due to them being made by the millions, is cheap, so the Chinese OEM used them, just took the wire clips off, and sold those as scrap metal.

Normally I'd say this was the case, but this is supposedly made in the USA. It's a hot-swappable telecom type "rectifier" module.

Kind of a genius idea really. Easy to install and remove makes assembly and repair easier. Downsides of course is that you can only use these clips where the component is near a heatsink edge (side or top), and this probably wouldn't be suitable for high power dissipation applications as the clamping pressure is not as much as some other types of clamps or a regular screw.

But for this application, obviously it works well!

As for the fault, didn't take long to find. Somehow a house fly found itself trapped between the bottom of the PCB and the case (no doubt sucked in by the cooling fan) and caused a gate-drain short on the MOSFET of the aux supply. BANG! One new MOSFET, couple of gate resistors, and a switch controller IC on the way, should be fixed.

[shakalnokturn]

After all these years and insects still existing despite the quantity of poisons aimed at them, still no one has considered a GSD arrangement for power MOSFETs 

[sahko123]

I have a box of these clips im going to start using it

[timeandfrequency]

This is probably a power supply for an office appliance.

[coppercone2]

I don't like it because I suspect with a shock load it could come off and short out the board. The clip from reply #1 is really actually pretty hard to get off, it wedges into a slot and anchors itself in there. This one will just gradually slide off.

[Jeff eelcr]

 I have a few older design paper clamps that I modified slightly and use
as an IC heatsink when installing a replacement IC.
 It shorts and sinks all pins at once, works great and only required a small
length of solderwick soldered to the clamp along each side.
Jeff 

[coromonadalix]

clever idea