Re: Security fasteners

Some can be carefully soaked off with the appropriate solvent and then replaced after the item has been reassembled - I am not at liberty to tell you how I know this.

You need to soak it longer and peel from both ends and the sides ;-)

One way clutch head screws exist, can be tightened clockwise but cam out counter clockwise.

I rented a competitor's instrument to test it and see what it looked like inside. It was generously plastered with stickers that said WARANTY VOID IF SEAL BROKEN. Fortunately, Amazon sells reels of that exact same sticker.

It was pretty ugly inside. And the boards were signed (some people do that) by a former employee of mine.

That's probably part of it.

Another part of it, likely.

In some cases, it's a question of "anti-circumvention". Products which are handling secured media (e.g. any high-definition video which has Denial-of-Rights-Management involved) often have to meet a security standard which requires that any access to the decrypted media data would require the use of "non-ordinary" tools and equipment. If they don't, the DRM/encryption provider won't license the product and provide the necessary product provisioning keys.

Using "security" fasteners which can't be opened using a flat-blade or Phillips screwdriver can be enough to move the product out of the "access using ordinary tools" category, and be good enough to meet the requirements of the media license holder.

Back when I was working for TiVo, and this issue came up with one of the vendors we were working with, I suggested that the only way to really deter people from opening up the DVR case and trying to access the disk and its contents, would be to install at least one alien face-hugger egg inside each unit. A few people open the cases, die horribly, and unleash a plague of vicious acid-blooded monsters on their communities... eventually the word would get around and people would stop doing that :-)

Management wouldn't go for it, and decided that security torx screws would be sufficient.

For warranty purposes, possibly so. However, this won't "protect" the internals of a product where the owner has no intention of ever letting the product get back into the hands of the manufacturer for examination.

I read that when a car maker introduces a new model, the first ones are bought by competitors for teardown. A 7-point Torx won't bother them.

Maybe lawyers want products to have visible and nominally difficult tamper-resistant fasteners, so when people lose a fingertip to a fan, they can argue that they tried to prevent that.