alt Hacker News> 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?
Replies
Thermaltake already makes a clone:
https://www.tomshardware.com/features/noctua-nf-a12x25-vs-to...
Noctua seems fine so long as you’re not copying the color scheme and branding. Interestingly TT had a 140mm version before Noctua. Noctua seems happy being the premium option.
Unless they have patents on their fan impleller geomeries, the IP they're referring to is likely just trade secrets. Trade secrets do have legal protections in the US, but those protections are mainly about disclosing or stealing those secrets, not about physically inspecting something and deriving the trade secret that way.
Not sure about the tech aspect of 3D scanning or if that would be accurate enough; I don't have any experience there to draw on.
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
I would think so, or by taking cross sections. Its hard to believe they have some miraculous geometry that needs guarding anyway. Maybe they are trying to dissuade people who might try to 3d print an impeller.
3d models for industrial fan manufacturers (Sanyo,NMB) are widely available.
I think they are trying to stop random small shops from making cosmetic copies that compete with their products.
Crude copies with convincing appearance would tarnish their brand. Visibly crude copies stop performance data of such copies from being mistaken as representative of actual products.
Yes, though the fidelity offered by faithful CAD would be both easier to interpret correctly and might even hint at the CAD feature tree.
Kudos to them for releasing models useful for integration.
If your goal is to reproduce it you could just make a cast of the fan and then use that to make a mold.
It’d be a bit tricky since you wouldn’t really have a convenient spot for a planar parting line, but should be possible.
Wouldn't there be too much error when you both 3D scan and 3D print it?
Unless they still have an unexpired patent on the design, it's completely legal to clone. Physical objects simply do not have the same type of copyright protection, and there is considerable precedent in making compatible components --- the most notable example being the automotive aftermarket.