After three years of experimenting with cooling systems on the drill motors, I've found that a simple, passive heat sink in the form of an aluminum motor mount (then to an aluminum chasis/baseplate) provides the best 'bang for the buck'. Actively cooling the motor mount/heat sink with a muffin fan provides a small amount of heat reduction, but it is to a much smaller extent when compared with the addition of a passive heat sink. A good thermal grease would certainly help, but I've never used it on a robot motor (yet). I may try a little
Arctic Silver in between the drill motors and their heat sinks to improve heat dissipation, but even without it, you'll feel all kinds of heat being shed off into a well-fitting mount (with the 'sleeve' removed, of course ;-) )
computer tangent:
[H]ard|Forum user from the beginning. I only use Alphas for air cooling (with AS and ASII) and am working on getting into water cooling once the
Coldforge AA-15 cases are available (and I have the money).
Current rig:
Athlon XP 1700+ (1.43GHz) @ 1.66Ghz w/ Alpha PAL8045 and ASII
512MB Corsair PC2100
Soyo Dragon plus w/ FasTrak 100 'full' BIOS flash
Radeon 8500 OEM w/ retail BIOS flash