Shaping Flow: Computational Design Strategies for High-Performance Liquid Heat Exchangers
Interview with Ryan O’Hara – Alloy Enterprises
Ahead of his presentation at CDFAM NYC, Ryan O’Hara, VP of Business Development at Alloy Enterprises, will share how their Stack Forging process bridges computational design and manufacturability enabling high-performance aluminum and copper cold plates with complex internal geometries, without traditional tooling or assembly.
What is your role at Alloy Enterprises, and what will you be presenting at CDFAM?
I serve as the VP of Business Development at Alloy Enterprises, where I connect our advanced manufacturing technology with the thermal needs of aerospace, defense, and high-performance computing customers.
At CDFAM, I will discuss how Alloy’s Stack Forging process is redefining the manufacturability of complex thermal management components, focusing on how digital fabrication and computational design enable monolithic aluminum or copper cold plates with embedded micro-geometries that outperform conventional brazed or skived-fin solutions in both performance and scalability.
What kinds of cold plate products does Alloy Enterprises specialize in, and how are they typically customized to meet client-specific thermal and mechanical requirements?
We specialize in high-performance cold plates and manifolds for GPUs, CPUs, and mission-critical power electronics.
Our products are made from fully dense aluminum 6061-T6 or copper 110 and integrate parallelized flow channels that feed microcapillaries that are only possible through Stack Forging.
These internal architectures are tuned to each application’s heat flux, pressure, and flow requirements, allowing us to minimize thermal resistance while reducing pressure drop and part count.
At what point in a development cycle should a customer consider reaching out to Alloy Enterprises, and what signals that your approach could offer value over off-the-shelf solutions?
The best time is when early design or early prototype testing shows that a standard cold plate has reached its thermal or hydraulic limits.
When a design demands lower pressure drop, improved temperature uniformity, or integrated mechanical and thermal functionality, that is when Stack Forging provides a clear advantage.
We also add value when customers are trying to move from small-batch prototyping to scalable production without redesigning around new tooling.
What data or performance criteria should a customer bring to the table when initiating a project with your team, such as thermal loads, spatial constraints, or pressure limits?
We typically start with basic boundary conditions including chip power, allowable junction temperature, coolant type and flow rate, and spatial constraints for the cold plate envelope. If pressure limits or maximum allowable pump head are known, we can optimize internal micro-geometries accordingly.
Alloy leverages CFD and thermal analysis to refine and optimize designs, ensuring the final geometry meets performance requirements for heat transfer and pressure drop before fabrication begins.
Can you explain how you balance simulation-driven optimization with manufacturing constraints, and how that influences design decisions throughout the workflow?
Our workflow combines computational design tools such as nTop and Onshape with Alloy’s internal design-for-Stack-Forging guidelines.
Because we can cut and bond thin sheets of custom feedstock at scale, we design with clear constraints on sheet thickness, minimum channel width, and bonding direction while maintaining large geometric freedom. This ensures that every design we simulate can actually be built and reproduced at production scale.
What are you hoping to share with and gain from the CDFAM audience in terms of computational design, scalable customization, and industry collaboration?
I hope to share how Alloy is closing the gap between computational design and real-world manufacturability and how geometry-driven optimization can now translate directly to hardware without traditional tooling or assembly limitations.
I am equally interested in connecting with others who are working on scalable design automation, generative workflows, and the intersection of thermal performance and manufacturability.
CDFAM brings together the community advancing digital fabrication from concept to industrial capability, and that is exactly where Stack Forging belongs.
Ryan O’Hara and Alloy Enterprises are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when computational design meets real-world manufacturability. If you’re working at the intersection of thermal performance, generative design, and scalable production, don’t miss the chance to connect in person.
Join us at CDFAM NYC to meet Ryan, explore Stack Forging firsthand, and be part of the community building the future of digital fabrication.
