[glend (Glen)]

I had an old Acer laptop in the shed awaiting the next electronics recycle day (the motherboard had failed), and decided to tear into it to see if there was any thin aluminium in the CPU heat shield/cooling system that I could use for my cold finger design. The attached photos show what I found. It had two solid copper cold fingers to draw heat from the CPU and graphics chip and take it to a copper radiator/heat sink (blow through design) which the scoll fan blows through to shed heat). I was pretty impressed, and since a Itel CPU inside a laptop is going to get much warmer than my camera sensor, it seemed a good platform for building a cold finger for the Canon. Even if I just use the CPU copper finger and machine it down to fit behind the sensor it should carry most of the heat out to the radiator/heatsink and fan. It's a very thin assembly so it does not weigh much (most of the weight is in the solid copper parts). If you have an old laptop laying around it is worth a look inside.
I also salvaged some thin aluminium heat shield and some aluminium/copper metalic tape and some other bits that could be reused.
All I need now is a TEC I think.