How are all locks/keys different when mass produced?

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Recently moved to a gym that uses padlocks for locking your stuff, they sell them too for an inflated price of 3.5$, jokingly I tried my key on a friend’s lock, and one more random one, of course it didn’t work and it made me curious.

My question is how do factories make all keys/locks different even at these cheap mass produced kinds that are probably sold for 0.5-2$, how is it worth for a factory to “use different patterns” at that price, or how do they do it?

In: Engineering

37 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Let’s just talk home door locks. There are 2 main keyway used in the USA, Kwikset and Schlege(?). Kwikset generally use 5 pinned locks with 6 different types of cuts. Schlege uses 5 or 6 pin locks with 9 different cut lengths. So doing the math, roughly every 1 in 8000 kwikset keys are the same and 1 in every 59,000 or 530,000 (depending if 5 or 6 pin) schlege keys are the same.

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