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
The basic locks are mass produced, but the actual security code is individualised. There are different pins that recognise different depth cuts on the keys.
So, a lock body gets to the pin insertion stage of production. It gets pin type 1 in slot 1, pin type 3 in slot 2,pin type 4 in slot 3. Then the lock is labelled with the pin codes. The lock is sealed up. Then it goes to the key stage, the pin code is read off and a key cut to the correct shape. The keys and lock are packaged up together.
The next lock down the production line gets a different code like 225. When it gets to the key station, a key is cut to match.
On low grade locks, there might only be a few hundred or thousand different key codes. This means that you will get several locks with the same keys by chance.
High quality High security locks can have quadrillions of possible key shapes. Each lock gets a randomised code which is checked against of every lock of that type ever made, so that 2 locks never share the same key, unless the customer specifically requests it.
Latest Answers