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

Some things do repeat, or are at least close enough to work. We found out at my work that the key that operates our Stacker, also opens a security cabinet. Still not sure why someone tried that, but it works. Also, I had a padlock for my locker there that opened another padlock that was used there as well.

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