Is Framework planning to ship this at some point? It seems pretty bad to need to print your own grill when Noctua collaborated on the project.

This isn't a problem. The article says that this is only if you're looking to trade-off performance for less noise:

> In other words, we would only recommend upgrading to the NF-A12x25 G2 if you seek to lower noise levels as much as possible and if you are willing to sacrifice the maximum performance headroom in worst-case scenarios that the G1 HS-PWM fan provides.

> It seems pretty bad to need to print your own grill when Noctua collaborated on the project.

not really, like if that would be seen as bad in general then the only solution would be to keep it a secret that they "collaborated" on it

like giving you employees a bit of time to work on product related passion projects, which might even cross company boundaries and can be used in a PR context is one thing. And a good example for it is software companies reserving some time of employees to work on OSS (in a context where OSS contributions go beyond what the company needs). It boost employee moral, is positive PR, let people learn/train their skills etc.

but going from there to a product they sell is a HUGE step, like far larger then it seems

like the cost between the tinkerer project from the article and turning it into a product is more like a x-times multipler then some two digit % increase.

a good example is a previous collaboration where for a 3d printed casing for the framework 13 motherboard, where due to high demand they then decided to produce it

but for production lines you now need to meet higher quality standard and 3d printing often isn't an option, so no it needs 2 molds and in addition the screw now need to have proper stable/metal thingies you screw them into in-layed into the mold. And you need to have QA, production line inspections etc. Idk. if they made money or a loss or neutral on it but at least from a QA perspective they got burned as many of the casings had quality issues where you needed to fix them with a sharp knife or they wouldn't close properly

now companies have 3 choices

- not allow such passion projects, which sucks for everyone

- allows them, but keep them secret, which still sucks for most

- rebrand it as "some vision prototype", "experimental change to the form factor" or similar (which is what many other tech companies do), now most people are happy except the tinkerers which could just print it, let it be printed with a 3d printing service

- allow them, show them, and make most people happy except the small amount of people which really want it, aren't fine with any tinkering and blame the company for showing something nice which might not make sense to sell as a product

and in that context I really prefer it the way Framework and Noctua tend to do it

"The safety standard suggests that ventilation openings on case side panels need to be less than 5mm in diameter. "

Appears that it doesn't pass safety guidelines, so this is one way to get around that.