This weekend I did a good clean of my wheelset and found some unexpected wear on the freehub of my Novatec D772SB (front D771SB). I've got these hubs now for about 8 months and I cannot believe this supposed to be in this short time. Some cogs damaged the freehub. It looks like Novatech made the freehub of soft material or is this a production failure ?
Shit, dude, ANY aluminum freehub will do this. I could go out into the shop and grab a Hope freehub, a Stan's Freehub, an older American Classic freehub, probably one or two more... all aluminum, and all far, far worse than that one. Aluminum is a soft metal, this is going to happen. American Classic has a brilliant design where they have steel inserts in the aluminum freehub body which prevents this, but they patent it and don't let anyone else use it. Of course, Novatec has copied it in some of their hubs. (but not this one)
I've got some aluminum freehubs so marked up that I have a bitch of a time getting the cassette off. Higher end cassettes - like you have - will prevent this from being an issue by putting bigger cogs (which have higher forces involved) on an aluminum or plastic carrier. Cheap cassettes have individual cogs and will do this all the way across.
If you're having trouble getting the first couple of cogs off, you can lightly file the outer diameter to kill the little mounds that form from this happening, but as long as you've got an aluminum freehub, this is going to happen, and doesn't represent a failure of the freehub at all.