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egeozcan
> To protect our intellectual property, certain features – such as fan impeller geometries – have been slightly modified while remaining visually very close to the actual product.

Noob question: If someone wants to copy their design with no respect to their intellectual property, can't they just 3D scan?

dgellow
You really don’t need to 3d scan, I’m not a cad expert and it took me just a few evenings to replicate pretty much the blade profile of my Noctua fans based on photos
colechristensen
A copy-of-a-copy can lose a lot of detail. If you're good, people are going to clone you, but you might as well not do their work for them and filter out at least the lowest effort clones. Given the profit margins of a lot of these things the effort and skill required could make the whole cloning venture not worth it.
m3kw9
so it's pretty useless if they just say it's their design, but not really.
rasz
Why not scan the original fan Noctua ripped off then? Nidec Servo Gentle Typhoon
kernalix7
Would have saved me time on a 3D printer I designed a while back. I integrated Noctua fans and ended up measuring mounting dimensions by hand. Having the official CAD models would have made fan integration a lot cleaner.
jasiek
Mikrotik does this for some of their parts as well
fy20
How much more is the BOM for a silent fan like in Noctua? I recently bought a controller for my well water pump, and it has two 80mm fans for cooling. Sounds like an aircraft when taking off and doesn't seem to move much air. I'm planning to replace them with Noctua fans.
swiftcoder
The Fan Showdown YouTube guy is going to have a field day
sylware
"Vercel Security Checkpoint"

"enable javascript to continue"

Bugger...

emsign
Meanwhile 3D printing is being banned in US states supposedly to prevent people from creating gun parts, because just buying a gun in the US isn't doable for a criminal. But in reality it's because ownership of production and machines is about to get banned for the lower classes.
richwater
recent scotus decision will make that much harder (not that lawmakers respect judicial decisions. but most firearm bills are overturned anyway).
dgellow
That’s so neat! I will be able to compare to my own CAD models from when I 3d printed my PC :D