| ▲ | Noctua releases official 3D CAD models for its cooling fans(noctua.at) |
| 194 points by embedding-shape 2 days ago | 31 comments |
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| ▲ | srott 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| There is Fan Show Down on yt where people are trying to beat the original Noctua fan design: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHLn2U7i45M_EXIsnqUyI... |
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| ▲ | egeozcan 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > 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? |
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| ▲ | nkrisc 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | userbinator 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | | |
| ▲ | kelnos 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | fecal_henge 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | quanto 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | There could be geometrically tiny optimizations that lead to an outsized impact in noise and flow by turbulence reduction. While optimizing an impeller with computational FSI (fluid structure interaction) is not as hard as before, it still is not trivial. And it's these (perhaps small) optimizations that justify Noctua being 5x more expensive than generic black fan. | | |
| ▲ | fyrn_ 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I believe the tolerances to the fan housing (which reduces turbulence and thus noise), and the the material stiffness needed for that small tolerance, are the alleged reason there are few copycats. Supposedly getting plastic that rigid is hard. I've tried to find hard numbers and validate that claim, but I wasn't able to. Would probably have to measure an actual noctua fan blade to know. On the other hand, metal printing is attainable now.. | | |
| ▲ | Iulioh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | While metal printing is attainable..it generally produce shit, surface quality wise. You still need to CNC that if you want a surface roughness not measured in mm And is not like a 5axis could not produce these fan geometries from a block | |
| ▲ | HPsquared 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Do they add glass fibers, I wonder. That's a way to make plastic stiffer but it's a bit harder to make. |
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| ▲ | zbrozek 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | egeozcan 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, by no means did I comment to take away from the great service they are doing to the builders. I'm a Noctua fan! I was just curious. | | | |
| ▲ | ForOldHack 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | From what I remember from my NASA friend, a few companies, hired a few fluid flow engineers, during the defense bust, and designed fan blades that remarkably increased air flow. ( think profiles like air plane wing ). Something happened and in a few years, there were good fans, and there were great fans. I happen to own a pair of Noctura fans, and wow! They are great, so I would assume that some heavy lifting was done in fluid flow. |
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| ▲ | whazor 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wouldn't there be too much error when you both 3D scan and 3D print it? | | |
| ▲ | ForOldHack 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | My guess is that both 3D printed fans and production fans get balanced, but the production fans have an extra bit of design, that makes the profile sail at both a wider speed range, and peaks at a higher speed. |
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| ▲ | kernalix7 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | ikornaselur an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I was just thinking the same! Spent few hours a month ago measuring 120mm noctua fans to build a custom mounting bracket for a rack cooling module I was making. Never finished it because I kept having to tweak and remeasure, but now I can definitely go back and finish it! | |
| ▲ | userbinator 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Aren't their dimensions standard? Many people replace other fans with Noctua's, after all. | | |
| ▲ | kernalix7 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The fan body itself follows standard 120/140mm dimensions, but I needed the smaller details for my design, the rubber dampers, anti-vibration corners, cable routing clips. Those don't show up cleanly in the datasheet, so I ended up using a caliper. That's the part the official CAD would have helped most with. |
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| ▲ | embedding-shape 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Tweet with image: https://x.com/Noctua_at/status/2048688184314273947 Example download: https://www.noctua.at/en/support/downloads?product=nf-a12x25... |
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| ▲ | fy20 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | Mashimo an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Probably best to look up the local prices yourself? We don't know where you live. There are fans that are cheaper that come close to noctua, but noctua are one of the best fans you can buy. | |
| ▲ | KeplerBoy 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well the cheapest crap fans are almost free, Noctua fans are certainly not free. So the added cost is the entire price of a Noctua fan. |
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| ▲ | swiftcoder 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The Fan Showdown YouTube guy is going to have a field day |
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| ▲ | jasiek 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Mikrotik does this for some of their parts as well |
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| ▲ | kernalix7 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Good to know, didn't realize Mikrotik did this too. Useful for homelab planning where rack space and airflow actually matter. |
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| ▲ | pylotlight 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] |
| repost?? |
