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ThermalRight SK-6 Lapping How-To
Date : Thursday, 25 October 2001 Author : sn1per Provided by : CoolerGuys Page : 2

The Steps

Step 1: 400 Grit Initial Cutting/Sanding

The initial cutting/sanding of the base. The first thing you will want to do is take the sandpaper and put it under a water faucet and get it completely soaked with water. Water will allow you to cut into the base much faster then using a dry piece of sandpaper. Water temperature does not matter at all. Me personally, I don't like sticking my hands under freezing cold water or scalding hot water. So an ambient temp is what I use. Now lets start the sanding. You can either apply some pressure and do small circular motions, or you can put your palm on the top of the SK-6, apply a lot of pressure, and just twist the heatsink in circles. I would definitely recommend using the gloves I told you about if you plan on applying pressure and doing a twisting motion. Applying pressure and twisting will cut into the base much faster saving you a lot of time, but if you apply to much pressure on one side, you can make the base of your SK-6 uneven. Doing the small circular motions is much slower, but you will not cut in as deep, and it is pretty hard to make the base uneven. If you do decide on applying the pressure and you accidentally make the base somewhat uneven, no need to sweat. Just switch over and do small circular motions until it is where you want it.

Left Image is Twisting and applying pressure. Right Image is doing small circular motions and applying limited pressure.

Here is what my heatsink looks like after about 10 minutes of cutting with pressure.

And this is it after about another 10 minutes.

Woohoo!!! I can goto step 2 now.

Step 2: 600 Grit Sanding

With the 600 grit you will definitely want to do small circular motions. There is no need to cut into the base any more starting with this step on. With the 600 Grit on up, all you are doing now is making the larger cuts/scratches on the base of the heatsink smaller. You will however want to apply a fair amount of pressure down onto the heat sink. You will also want to completely soak the sandpaper with water once again. After hitting it and making the cuts in the base of heatsink smaller, I like to then use a dry piece of sandpaper to make the larger cuts smaller. Using dry sandpaper allows for a finer, smoother sanding. At this point, you will notice after doing a dry lap that the heatsink is starting to shine.

As you can see, the finer sandpaper's do not like to soak up the water and they tend to puddle. This is fine.

Step 3: 800 Grit Sanding

This is where the How-To starts to get somewhat boring. You will do the same thing with the 800 grit that you did with the 600 grit. There is no difference at all in the way you would do this. All you are doing is making those cuts/scratches smaller.

Step 4: 1000 Grit Sanding

Hey guess what???? Yup, you guessed right, do the same exact thing. One thing to note. If you are a cheap a$$, you could stop when you finish the 1000 grit sanding if you did a good job at making the cuts much much smaller. I would not this though. If you do stop here, you could attempt to apply the polish, but you will be applying polish for about 4 hours just to get it to shine. Now, do you really want to waste 4 hours instead of paying maybe an extra $10 to $15? If you say yes to this question, I will find you, and hunt you down, and attempt to tattoo "KMart Case Modder" on your forehead. Here is a sneak peek at the base of my heatsink after hitting it with 1000 grit sandpaper.

Not to shabby ay? You just wait until you have a finished project with this one.

Step 5: 1500 Grit Sanding

HEHE...I won't go there, but yes, this step will be ALMOST the exact same The major difference though, DO NOT APPLY A LOT OF PRESSURE!!!! Yes, you heard right. I like to use the wet sandpaper for about 2 minutes here max. Small circular motions. After about 2 minutes (It's up to you. If you think it is ready and it is starting to shine a heck of a lot more), you can hit it with dry sand paper. What I like to do is barely apply any pressure, let the heatsink's weight be the pressure I will do small circular motions and add a little side to side action while doing this step. You will now see a nice smooth base and an extremely ugly look in the base of the heatsink. Oh wait, that is your face, my bad. ;p. No really, the base will look almost sexy at this point. Well, depends on if you have a heatsink fetish or not. Here is what my SK-6 looks like at this point.

Step 6: Applying The Polish

This was my final step in the lapping of the SK-6. It depends on if you want to make another step and hit it with 2000 Grit Sandpaper or not. Applying the polish is super easy, and you can even sit on your couch and watch TechTV or whatever you like while applying the polish. According to the directions on the Mothers Polish:

DIRECTIONS: Apply a small amount of polish to a terry cloth towel. Rub polish onto metal surface until black residue appears. Buff off residue with a clean terry cloth towel. Hard rubbing is not necessary. Use sparingly. MOTHERS will not scratch metal surfaces.

DANGER: HARMFUL OR FATAL IF SWALLOWED. Now if you swallow this stuff, then you should be in some sort of mental hospital getting your head checked because you are a few sandwiches shy of a picnic.

Now I will let you in on a little secret. I was a cheap a$$ when I did this step. Why? I didn't buy a terry cloth towel to do this. Instead, I used an old pair of underwear. It left some weird brown streaking that I couldn't get out. #@#@ JUST KIDDING. I used an old T-shirt. This worked perfectly for this job. Just to note, your T-shirt will be unbearable in the future after this due to all of the black nasty dirty marks from the heatsink. Now, if you did happen to swallow some of the polish, well heck, go ahead and wear the shirt anyway. I guess you will think they are black poka-dots anyway. Alrighty, lets move on shall we. I spent maybe and hour total polishing my SK-6. What this polish will do is deep clean the base of the heatsink and take out any scratches that you may have left after sanding. Very easy job.

As you can see, when you apply the polish it will leave a black dirty film. This means it is cleaning and sanding.

Once you finish the polishing, the next thing you will want to do is run it under warm water and scrub the base of the SK-6 with a soft cloth or, take a bunch of cotton balls and grab some rubbing alcohol. Cover the cotton balls with rubbing alcohol and then do small circular motions on the base of the SK-6. I prefer the rubbing alcohol method because for some odd reason I feel that the alcohol will clean better then the water or soapy water. What you want to make sure is you get all of the residue that may be left from polishing.

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