I'm at the last stages of re-spinning a board (4 channel RGBW WiFi controller). Mostly some general cleanup of repositioning some parts but I do have one issue.
I use a SOT-223 as a voltage regulator. It drops the 12V in to 5V at not quite 0.1 amps, so there is at most .7 watts being dissipated. The current spin, when measuring the temperature of this device via un-calibrated finger tip indicated the thing is quite warm (though you can leave your finger on it). I would prefer to bring this temperature down.
Currently the board sits in free air, but possible one day will be mounted inside a box.
Is there a guide I can use for connecting the thermal tab to a large copper area? Should this area be unmasked or is a mask not such an issue?
I use a SOT-223 as a voltage regulator. It drops the 12V in to 5V at not quite 0.1 amps, so there is at most .7 watts being dissipated. The current spin, when measuring the temperature of this device via un-calibrated finger tip indicated the thing is quite warm (though you can leave your finger on it). I would prefer to bring this temperature down.
Currently the board sits in free air, but possible one day will be mounted inside a box.
Is there a guide I can use for connecting the thermal tab to a large copper area? Should this area be unmasked or is a mask not such an issue?