make sure to submit a patent! once you show it to the world, in the US you have 1 yr to file a patent until that idea becomes unpatentable also Lock Picking Lawyer ?
I don't think the world needs more "unpickable lock" designs because there are numerous already, and they all provide a degree of deterrence while being defeatable and so will any lock ever made. What it needs is more manufacturers following well known established product quality and safety practices. And it needs people in charge of buying to care. You can't change either by introducing another lock.
Maybe trying stiffer springs and/or varying the stiffness might allow the lock to be able to resist those kinetic attacks. A stiffer spring should make it require more force and different stiffnesses might also mess with those attempts if you couple it with spooled or serrated pins.
I just watched all three of your videos, very entertaining and I'm really impressed at how simple your design is. I'm looking forward to see more updates!
I loved your lock and ornithopter videos. Definitely an inspiration for me to get started and throw a lock design up here on TH-cam. Thanks for the comment!
Instead of offering 'matched' topper plates. just drop two toppers into random pin slots, any key thus made should be made wrong by preventing decoding by trial and error.
You're probably doing this already, but there should be a guard in place to protect the watchdog pin. Without that someone can shove a shim with a detachable tip all the way into the back and jam the watchdog permanently open, then glue together the two parts of the core and pick as normal. This is technically a bit destructive, but since it preserves all the locking/unlocking functionality of the lock and only damages its pick resistance it's still stealthy.
you could add a dead pin that does not get hit by the key, similar to the watchdog pin. this pin is set to the correct height by default, so hammering the lock would bounce it out of position and bind the core, making it unable to open
Hmm I don’t think that would work vs hammering since between blows it could resettle. For my money we machine in lock bars which go along the keyway’s outer shell and limit the top pins travel
@@mjp121 maybe you could machine a specific offset which would make this anti bump pin bind specifically before any other pin would, basically like what the tolerance does to allow the other pins to bind, but in this pin it would jam the lock instead, making all other pins just fall back down, not binding at all during a bump
what if the pin was slightly convex, that way any bump would cause the pin to push itself away from the center, and would only fall back into place when tension is removed
Please keep this project going, I'm sure that there are a lot of people interested in your work that would be willing to actually use it if it achieves total picking protection.
Wow! That's brilliant! It's so simple and effective at the same time! I'm looking forward to seeing your lock on the LockPickingLawyer's table. StuffMadeHere and WorksByDesign locks are extremely complex, but your design uses almost stock parts with only small complications. So exited to see more .
A common defense for kinetic attacks and bumping are to just vary the springs on the pins. You might give that a try. A cerated or spooled pin might also possibly bind more reliable during such an attack.
Hi, I'm in a locksport and found your videos. I'm very interested in what you are doing and think it is worth while to continue. Thanks for expending the effort! 😁
Not only are you taking an open and thorough approach to designing this lock, but you also present it in a clear and professional manner. Great work! I hope your lock design improves and that more people find you.
Subscribed. Your attention to detail and hard work really shine through. It's clear that you put a lot of effort into making everything high-quality, and it doesn't go unnoticed. Your sharp mind and insightful commentary make your content stand out from the rest. Keep up the amazing work; you have a unique talent, and I can't wait to see what you do next!
Just binged all 3 videos on this lock and was mindblown to see that they’re your first videos. Without having looked I’d be certain this was a channel with subscribers in the millions. Fantastic in both presentation and demonstration!
I'm a security nerd and engineer for a living and love your approach to this. From a pinning perspective, locksmiths like easy to follow instructions - A chart of valid pinnings is not going to be easy to follow. Not sure of another solution to the problem, just thinking this solution isn't it. Maybe go with a random variety of spring strengths?
You’re an amazing educator mate, the diagrams, props and the like you made for explaining the mechanisms were super helpful to understand it all better
I am very impressed with your understanding of locks and hacking techniques. Most people are unable to think in a complex way that is not based on their beliefs. Very nice.
Always good to see well-thought-through activity in this space. Thoughts: I'd be curious to see a comparison with Enclave, the only prior attempt at an unpickable lock I've seen that looks good to my eyes. Both approaches have some unwanted extra complexity, but they trade off differently. I've always been a bit skeptical of dual-core designs being commercially viable, which is an advantage of Enclave. I love how pragmatic the watchdog pin is. I think you should be scared of bypasses though. They're coming from two sides, as well. Against bumping attacks, you want the watchdog pin to be first to reset, so that it can't get stuck in the set position while you're picking other pins. Against forced rotation of the outer core (if an attacker got access, which seems plausible), you want it to be the first to bind, so the other pins can't be decoded. In contrast I'm really not a fan of the clocking pin, it seems so clunky. I think you should be able to just repurpose the watchdog pin to fill the same role. Make the bottom pin slightly oversized, and bring the cam down appropriately. When you want to start rotating the inner core, bring the cam up to full height. This will catch on the pin and force the inner core to rotate. To return on the other side of the cam you skip the inner step. I'm happy to explain in more detail if that wasn't clear. I had some designs floating around my head for a manufacturable unpickable lock since a while before it became a popular topic with StuffMadeHere and co., so I'm pretty engaged in the topic and would be excited to see more forward movement in any of this. My own ideas had their own ups and downs, and I think the newer stuff I'm seeing out of your lock and Enclave is better than what I came up with.
Well this is all super cool, and I'm real impressed by the degree of professional engineering chops on display here - Most projects like this are presented from a way less technical perspective. For my two cents, I immediately suspect a second form of kinetic attack might be possible: By taking the opposite approach and setting all pins to the minimum height, a kinetic impact could potentially bounce the whole wafer stack around until it bound in the normal keyed position.
Make sure that the watchdog driver pin is the thightest in the whole lock. That way you cannot apply very light tension and feel/decode the stack against the shearline edge. Another way to try to make the shearline easier to feel in the stack is to push the core inwards or pull it outwards. Due tolerances required to allow the parts to move, there will be always small amount of play in every direction so all directions can be used to pick or decode the lock.
If you do succeed in foiling bumping, raking, and kinetic attacks, don't forget to try magnets. That seems to be a common way to defeat locks that resist mechanical attacks, and is often how electronic locks are defeated. I subscribed and am looking forward to your next video in this series! 🙂
Watched all of your 3 videos. Your way to explain things with simple cardbord cutouts is incredible! Also i am impressed about the genius way to improve the lock. Instead of adding a New part i would rather use different driver pin length.
Exellent video series, all very proffesional. well planned. Great choice of project, I made a Bramah copy 40 years ago after finding a drawing in a lock book with a description on how it had remained unpicked for 61 years and finally took 51 hours. it has binding sliders. Impressive coverage of attack methods. Victorian patents are fascinating.
Please continue this, if you can. I would absolutely love to see you succeed with your design and market this product and, hopefully, displace the "security" companies by offering a product that actually works and gives us actual security rather than the illusion of security.
Nice work, looks like you’ve got a good design. I believe the lock could still be “float picked” where careful tension control is used to hold the core just past a neutral position and different combinations attempted. It would still be a lengthy pick, testing the possibilities but could still be picked.
Thanks for the comment. I would love to understand this strategy better. With the core just past the neutral position, would be brute forcing the key combinations? Or just each of the possibilities of an individual pin stack?
@@BuiltDifferentDesigns it would depend on the feedback the lock gives. I could test a combination, move the core to test for open then manually counter rotate the core back testing each pin until I can find one that allows me to move a pin one more position and then test again. This is an extremely tedious process and time consuming so in real world scenarios it would be “practically” unpickable without knowing the bitting on the key. Unfortunately a lock with this many master wafers would struggle with reliability issues in real world uses as the thinnest wafers can flip and turn as wear and dirt are introduced to the lock. Picking can also cause this issue.
@@BuiltDifferentDesigns I would recommend sending a copy to Georgia Jim to pick if you want to see if the lock can be picked, he's picked so many locks, many that are much higher difficulty than LPL. I would recommend sending a copy to LPL to see if it's vulnerable to other attack vectors such as bypasses, but Jim is the one to see if it's vulnerable to picking.
Yes that would be time consuming and perhaps a set of tryout keys could also work. However KW1 has some limitations regrading the number of valid keys 5^6 = 7776 theoretical keys down to 6306 with a MACS of 4. That is further cut down to 2969 with impact arrest stacks in position 2 and 4 (there is nuance here). I would like to go to a KW10/KW11 or even KW5. The geometry and size of quickset pins is particularly appealing. To your second point if I do continue to pursue this idea, a study of the wear over time would be conducted to determine failure modes and monitor what wear would look like over the lifetime of the lock.
@@BuiltDifferentDesigns you could also look at other common key systems like SC4 (6 pin Schlage) which has more pin heights to give you more bitting options.
Damn, you only have 3 videos and 500 subs? This video was recommended to me and I only noticed halfway through, I would have never guessed that, great job and I would love to see more!
Great video, very well presented content. I hope that in the future, after a few changes in filming and editing techniques, this channel will be very popular.
This is quite interesting, when I saw things are made here design I felt like it’s too complicated, but this one is very simplistic and it seems more resilient, impressive!
Really cool project. Very well made clear videos. Was very suprised to see these were your first 3 videos. Feel like they are made by someone who hs been doing this for a while. Cheers.
This is amazing! Keep it up, the design is cool and it would be amazing to see you iterate on it and collaborate with the locksport community to refine and simplify the design.
I want this lock to be out there, even if it’s not perfect it’s a far cry better than the other locks made. Lock companies will only improve their locks if they have the competition to make the do so.
I know that not everyone lives where they can invest in the sort of security that we have to protect our home, but we have two big furry noisy solutions that don't take kindly to strangers unless we tell them to. We have to keep them charged up all the time, it's about fifty bucks a month for that, and they need attention several times a day. They need to be let outside to purge themselves, and their mommy has to escort them up and down the street in the evening to make sure nothing untoward is happening in our neighborhood, but they are very effective at securing our homestead - even when we're all here! Heck, I even love these two pieces of ancient technology like they're family and it will be a sad day when each of them breaks down and stops working. It's not cheap maintaining them, and they can be time consuming, but they're our furry boys and they aren't afraid to put in work to earn their keep. P.S. The production quality has gone off the rails on this channel! Dial it back if it means putting more content up! ;]
I remember a lock on LPL, might have been a mod he did himself, where if you attempted to pick the lock and got it wrong, a wafer would drop into a slot and permanently jam the lock. I've always liked that approach because it leaves evidence of a break in attempt, as well as being virtually impossible to pick (equivalent to trying to guess a short password with only 1 attempt, you might get it, but almost definitely not)
Kinetic attacks, I might've known. I am impressed with your design so far but it is quite an undertaking to make an unpickable lock. Once you're confident in it, definitely send this in to LPL
This is one of the most interesting videos in the series! Learnt a lot about different attacks. Shame it hasn't caught the same algorithm bump as the other two. If you don't bring this to market - then releasing the design as open source, so anyone could produce them, in a way that other manufacturers couldn't patent, would be a great public service!
Though you solved the lift and rap attack, I believe the design is still vulnerable to a kinetic attack. Particularly a bumping attack done in combination with a plug spinner. In this attack unlike normal bumping tension would not be applyed before striking the pins, rotation only begins after the pins have been hit. The plug spinner would allow the rotation of the core fast enough to reach the clocking. While it may be possible to perform this attack with two separate tools such as a snap gun and plug spinner, the timing required makes that highly unlikely. A new tool where the two are combined would be more plausible. As this requires new tooling to be designed, and other locks would be similarly vulnerable, I don't believe this detracts from the security of your design. Further the innovation of new tools to attack your design shows how well you have guarded against traditional attack vectors. Well done! I hope to see this project continue, your innovation is great to see!
Looks like a shim could be inserted between the cores from the front on the lock. Not sure what that would achieve but I'd ensure there is no gap there to be safe
For these kinetic attacks, is there a way to put something in the core that when jiggled drops/jams the core such that it can't be rotated any further? Of course you'll need to be able to reset it such that normal operation doesn't get too thwarted...
I did just finnish watching your videos, I loved them and they are great, I have seen this kind of design for a lock before called a co-axial lock by Andy Pugh, I would call it a sleeved core, anyway I would approach it with a type of float picking method as mentioned before, it could take some time but to me it would seem possible to get it picked, keep up the great work
I have seen a locksmith try to pick a lock in the field. It took him like 30 min, when he was trying different tools and methods of attack. Like he had a really jagged key, which he was hammering into the lock. He tried regular picking. He tried raking. He did manage to pick it, but it took him a long time, and he did make a lot of noise. And the lock was a regular European cylinder. Perhaps he wasn't as skilled as some TH-camrs. Or perhaps picking locks on the field is much more difficult than doing it in a controlled environment, but it FEELS like most locks aren't as insecure as they are made out to be... at least not the ones in Europe.
I had that once here in Australia, calling a locksmith out to get me back into my apartment. The door had a deadlatch (which I had bought from the hardware store) and a passthrough (which I'd had re-keyed to match the deadlatch). Nothing too fancy, and from memory the passthrough (doorknob) wasn't even locked. Locksmith came out, spent a few minutes trying and failing to open the deadlatch with a pick gun (which was really loud). Then he stopped, looked at me, and said "hang on, did you say they're keyed the same?" (which I had said when he first arrived). Then he removed the barrel from the passthrough lock, took it out to his van, disassembled it, and cut me a new key to match the pinning on that barrel. Reassembled the barrel, confirmed that the key worked in that, confirmed that the key worked in the deadlatch, and then reinstalled the barrel in the passthrough. Entirely competent locksmith, no question. Lesson for me is that locksmiths aren't necessarily skilled at lockpicking per se. And yeah I reckon LPL could have opened that deadlatch silently within half a minute, but that's because he's put a huge amount of time and effort into developing that specific skillset.
On the question of how secure most locks really are, I think the answer is that in practice most criminals aren't going to bother trying to pick the lock in the first place. They're going to go straight for a destructive attack, or an easier and/or more discreet entry point.
imagine the lock of your combined with the second lock of ,,works by design,, and the lock from ,,Stuff made here,, together. I don’t even know if this would work. You 3 should work together to make the most secure and complicated lock of all time.
I don't think he is aiming for complexity for the sake of complexity. He's trying to keep it as simple as possible as complexity requires greater adherence to tolerances. He's trying to show that lock makers could make a lock that is more secure if they really wanted to.
Andy Pugh has a similar lock design, for which he says he has applied for a patent. These BDD videos are munh more descriptive than anything I found about Andy Pugh.
1 or 2 security pins (e.g. spools or serrated pins) and varied driver springs would also help with kinetic attacks, I feel. You could also have a set pin in the back that isn't interacted by the key, but still has a taper to it, so that a kinetic attack dislodges it and binds the mid-core. Adding a front overhang/plate to the outer core to cover the watchdog pin would also help in a mildly destructive attack, where someone shoves and breaks a piece of something under the pin to bypass it, then link the 2 corse together or just doing a traditional pick.
You’ve mentioned stuff made here, but another channel named Works By Design has also been trying their hand at an unpickable lock with some interesting techniques. Perhaps they could provide some additional inspiration for your designs.
great design which tackles the essence of the problem. However, can you somehow test it's durability... with these more complicated pin stacks I can imagine that after 1000 openings the small disks may get stuck and lock you out entirely?
I might be mistaken but it looks like both the inner core and outer core can be accessed from the face of the lock. I'm not sure if this gives an attack vector, but I'd think for the final design only the inner core should be visible from outside of the lock housing.
love the series, you have the right mind for this! I wonder what patent barriers are there? like maybe there is a significantly better design or elements of a design (more effective, simple, easy to manufacture) already invented, but it is patented, someone is sitting on the patent so there is no hope for such an endeavor with evolutionary design iterations on the pin lock? I have no idea but something worth looking into.
I just saw your "how to build" video in my recommendations, and would like to offer my thoughts. Your design is very similar to one I suggested on a lock picker's forum a few years ago, and I doubt I was the first to think of it. A critical flaw someone pointed out that I'm surprised you haven't yet run into is that unless the tolerances between the wafers and pin stacks are very tightly controlled, it's possible for wafers to get jammed in a mis-aligned state if there's ever any slack space between them. If that were to happen in a lock, it may be impossible to ever open it again without access to the tops of the pin stacks. I've had some other ideas for variations of "sample then test" locks if you'd be interested, but I'm not sure how best to share them.
I'm curious if you used security pins as master and driver, because I didn't notice it in the manufacturing video. I think that they can make impact attacks less effective. Regardless, nice lock!
I think you could prevent drilling attacks if you make a rotating plate at the very beginning, which would rotate freely with the borers and install some carbide pins in the lock itself. But I don't know if there are any disadvantages
Suppose that you did attach the core to the mid core in someway (e.g. wedging as mentioned). Then, even though the watchdog pin will prevent standard picking, would it not be possible to bump the lock until you set the watchdog pin and THEN pick the lock as normal?
Really nice clean design. In the vein of a few other locks that have been proposed of late focused on separating the testing from the setting. I think the two parts of your design that make it less commercially viable than it would appear are as follows. 1) In its current form it is a one way lock so you can not lock the bolt using the key. limits the applications 2) is the size of the core, Making new hardware to fit a new cylinder is not a commercially viable thing to do at this point in the lock business.
Not being able to lock the deadbolt with a key is a bigger issue than you might expect. Rental property owners deliberately use a deadbolt along with a passage doorknob (doorknob does not lock) so that the renters cannot lock themselves out without using the key. The key might still get lost or stolen, but otherwise the renter can’t be locked out accidentally.
I got some ideas on possible solutions to the decoding and bumping attacks: 6:29 you could change the length of the hole to be different long, which would eleminate the need of these extra pins. Sure these can be added additionally for more manufactorable variants but wouldnt be specificly required. 9:54 instead of moving pin stacks with longer travel, how about changing the springs to ones which physically cannot be compressed far enough for the master pin as you called it to be lifted over the second shear line? Meaning the minimal length is still so long that even in the worst case aka pin jumping as high as possible the shear line cannot be cleared leading the termination of that attack vector
I would be curious to see the lift and rap attack tried with a vibratory tool instead. It may still be able to jump the master pins. It's not a vector I would expect someone attacking the lock off the street to take but it'd be interesting to see
This is one of the best series on locks I've seen on TH-cam. Thank you for your hard work! I would love to see this lock in production, and before that, purchase a prototype to play with. Any chance I could get one?
Here's an extra idea for you to think about. If percussion attacks work on joggling the pins until something lines up, how about adding some extra protection pins around the shear line that are actually held on weak springs and end just fractionally clear of the shear line say at 120 degree intervals around the circumference. Banging the lock, whilst you may line the tumblers up for a millisecond would likely also vibrate one of the protection pins into the shear line, jamming it in place for the same millisecond and thus defeating a percussion attack. Not sure if I have explained this very well, hopefully you get the idea.
This is perhaps a dumb question but I might as well ask it. I've noticed that you lock the deadbolt from the "inside" part of the lock and not with the key itself. Is it just not possible to lock the deadbolt from the "outside" with the current design?
Wouldn't having a single pin stack where topper-pin + driver-pin + key-pin are larger than the area above the mid-core be enough to prevent the attack with the hammer? Am I missing something?
when you tried the bump attack, you place the lock "upside down", with the pin facing down, will it be as efficient with the pins facing up ? If not, it can be a requirement for this lock when installed
total newbie here. My ideas are probably stupid, but I can think of two things: 1. can you use coils with different coefficients? I mean, one coil slightly harder than the order? So they will jump different heights when bumped. 2. instead of a coil pushing the pins down can you have a coil in the bottom part, cleverly mounted to pull the pins down? pull instead of push. A strong magnet pushing a special pin down? Just some ideas.
Would you be able to stop attackers from putting tension on the lock and perform impact attacks by making the locks pins rest on a false set? (hope it makes sense)
I’m missing why the wafers are necessary. They always introduce weakness. Also, could a second watchdog pin be added at an opposing angle? That could help with kinetic attacks.
The wafers are there to transfer the lift pattern above the core shear line before the mid-core is allowed to rotate and "test" lift against the key pins at the outer shear line. The idea here is that once the core starts rotating, wafers are locked into position by the core shear, making any further pin manipulations impossible until the core is reset. I had the exact same idea a few years ago, probably described it in a LPL comment back then. I also had another variant of this where leaf springs are used to transfer lift between the key-side pins and shear-side pins to completely eliminate the mechanical connection. Though this would require having separate sets of springs for the two core layers, which would make the core stupidly large and difficult to put together.
Would it be possible to just add springs on top of the pins? That way kinetic attacks wouldn't work since the force would have to fight against the springs.
Watchdog attack: - Lift the watchdog pin by inserting a long tool and pushing it up, fixing it in place (glue or wedging) - Attach core and midcore together (glue or wedging) - With the separation of setting and testing thwarted, regular lockpicking may commence
Would it be susceptible to brute force, "reverse" single pin picking? One could set the pins in the shallowest positions, turn the core to testing position, and slowly turn it back out while pushing the pins so they can selectively raise each pin with every attempt of the "testing" phases until a combination works. Not sure how to apply it in practice and it'll be like trying to brute force a hard-to-turn combination lock, but anyways such a vulnerability (if it even practically exists) is far from being a point of concern.
I’m no expert but I feel with all these smart parts in a lock, there are a lot that can go wrong. The tiny little disk pins could tip over and lock up. You mentioned in another video that machines are not precise and perfect, this also makes the lock more prone to jams in my eyes. You also mentioned that it’s impossible to get the pins over the sheer line, but there are tools that pass a wire thru them. The wire is insert further in so that it can push the pins above the line. I believe Sparks and Code made a tool like one I just mentioned.
While the disc pins /could/ turn, it's nor something you would expect for a few reasons, A. it's marketed as a door lock so the normative forces are limited, B. it's under load from the springs, C they're in a column, All of which is too say even if they shift slightly they'll be pushed back, a worse? case is using a malformed key and them getting gummy in the lock turning, but again they'll naturally realign because they are in the __ form, they need a LOT of space to get to the I, or even /, and in that case they would still be prone to going flat again if jossled because the key pins are blocks N that can't be turned sideways. All of this is assuming the wafers are thin enough that they can be turned at all. if it's I==I the thickness will stop turning like any of the larger pins.
🤔I have a question: why are there so many master wafers, instead of an appropriately-sized single pin? I didn't see any explanation in the first video, but I might have zoned out, or been distracted by my dog. Is it to stop the pins binding the middle cylinder to the bottom cylinder? Sorry I'm late to the vids! Also, where's the Patreon? If you're spending a couple hundred dollars 💸 on brass prototypes, I'd love to chip in a bit! 🙇♂
"Separating the setting from the testing". Along these lines, I have wondered if it would be possible to use serrated pins to solve the setting/testing separation problem. When you start to turn the key, there is no initial resistance at all, but the serrations slide into grooves that lock the pins into place. Only after the pins are locked in place is any testing performed with some additional rotation. The fineness of the serrations and mating grooves would limit the number of possible key cuts, though.
I absolutely love this lock design, it’s simplicity, it’s ease of manufacturability, it’s thought about pin compatibility. However, your design I think may have one issue, your lock body might not be compatible with some lock housings because of how beefy your lock body is. So you might not be able to install your lock on some standard housings like an Abus housing or some other standard housings. I’d be interested to see if you could design your lock to be more flexible in this regard.
This might go against making designs simpler a bit but could an alternative solution to kinetic attacks be to make the wafers and pins magnetic? That way bumping them etc wont dislodge or bounce the pins and wafers inside. They can still be pushed up and down and be separated by turning the cores and shearing them apart, but they won't separate by simply bumping, etc.
![[1422] Did I Cheat On This Challenge? (Tamper-Sealed Abus)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xUJtqvYDnkg/mqdefault.jpg)
![[1422] Did I Cheat On This Challenge? (Tamper-Sealed Abus)](/img/tr.png)
If you care about security and would be interested to see this lock further developed and brought to market. Like this comment.
make sure to submit a patent! once you show it to the world, in the US you have 1 yr to file a patent until that idea becomes unpatentable
also Lock Picking Lawyer ?
I'd like to see it developed and brought to LPL :)
Bro i want to buy this, if not at least release the design in something like creative common.
I don't think the world needs more "unpickable lock" designs because there are numerous already, and they all provide a degree of deterrence while being defeatable and so will any lock ever made. What it needs is more manufacturers following well known established product quality and safety practices. And it needs people in charge of buying to care. You can't change either by introducing another lock.
Maybe trying stiffer springs and/or varying the stiffness might allow the lock to be able to resist those kinetic attacks.
A stiffer spring should make it require more force and different stiffnesses might also mess with those attempts if you couple it with spooled or serrated pins.
I just watched all three of your videos, very entertaining and I'm really impressed at how simple your design is. I'm looking forward to see more updates!
I loved your lock and ornithopter videos. Definitely an inspiration for me to get started and throw a lock design up here on TH-cam. Thanks for the comment!
Came here from watching your video.
Instead of offering 'matched' topper plates. just drop two toppers into random pin slots, any key thus made should be made wrong by preventing decoding by trial and error.
You're probably doing this already, but there should be a guard in place to protect the watchdog pin. Without that someone can shove a shim with a detachable tip all the way into the back and jam the watchdog permanently open, then glue together the two parts of the core and pick as normal. This is technically a bit destructive, but since it preserves all the locking/unlocking functionality of the lock and only damages its pick resistance it's still stealthy.
In the diagram, it looks like the Watchdog pin is shielded. So, you can't shim it all the way to the back.
A related issue might be gluing the cores together and then using an impact to disengage the watchdog pin and allow rotation.
@@AlexRickabaugh using glue would have a high chance of making the entire lock seize up and permanently be unable to turn.
@ZachareSylvestre that's a fair point, maybe a different adhesive? Idk how well like hot glue would bind to it.
Yo, it's Bram Cohen, inventor of bit torrent, and twisty puzzle enthusiast/legend! How many puzzles has Oskar named after you?
These lock design innovation videos are some of the most interesting engineering videos on TH-cam
you could add a dead pin that does not get hit by the key, similar to the watchdog pin. this pin is set to the correct height by default, so hammering the lock would bounce it out of position and bind the core, making it unable to open
Hmm I don’t think that would work vs hammering since between blows it could resettle. For my money we machine in lock bars which go along the keyway’s outer shell and limit the top pins travel
@@mjp121 maybe you could machine a specific offset which would make this anti bump pin bind specifically before any other pin would, basically like what the tolerance does to allow the other pins to bind, but in this pin it would jam the lock instead, making all other pins just fall back down, not binding at all during a bump
what if the pin was slightly convex, that way any bump would cause the pin to push itself away from the center, and would only fall back into place when tension is removed
Great design. Would love to see TLPL take a shot at it once it is refined.
Being tested by the lock picking lawyer is pretty much a rite of passage before calling a lock (actually) pick proof.
Please keep this project going, I'm sure that there are a lot of people interested in your work that would be willing to actually use it if it achieves total picking protection.
highlighting the reasons for why other attacks are preferable are a very interesting point!
Wow! That's brilliant! It's so simple and effective at the same time! I'm looking forward to seeing your lock on the LockPickingLawyer's table.
StuffMadeHere and WorksByDesign locks are extremely complex, but your design uses almost stock parts with only small complications. So exited to see more .
A common defense for kinetic attacks and bumping are to just vary the springs on the pins. You might give that a try. A cerated or spooled pin might also possibly bind more reliable during such an attack.
Hi, I'm in a locksport and found your videos. I'm very interested in what you are doing and think it is worth while to continue.
Thanks for expending the effort! 😁
Not only are you taking an open and thorough approach to designing this lock, but you also present it in a clear and professional manner. Great work! I hope your lock design improves and that more people find you.
Subscribed. Your attention to detail and hard work really shine through. It's clear that you put a lot of effort into making everything high-quality, and it doesn't go unnoticed. Your sharp mind and insightful commentary make your content stand out from the rest. Keep up the amazing work; you have a unique talent, and I can't wait to see what you do next!
Just binged all 3 videos on this lock and was mindblown to see that they’re your first videos. Without having looked I’d be certain this was a channel with subscribers in the millions. Fantastic in both presentation and demonstration!
I'm a security nerd and engineer for a living and love your approach to this. From a pinning perspective, locksmiths like easy to follow instructions - A chart of valid pinnings is not going to be easy to follow. Not sure of another solution to the problem, just thinking this solution isn't it. Maybe go with a random variety of spring strengths?
You’re an amazing educator mate, the diagrams, props and the like you made for explaining the mechanisms were super helpful to understand it all better
I am very impressed with your understanding of locks and hacking techniques. Most people are unable to think in a complex way that is not based on their beliefs. Very nice.
Always good to see well-thought-through activity in this space.
Thoughts:
I'd be curious to see a comparison with Enclave, the only prior attempt at an unpickable lock I've seen that looks good to my eyes. Both approaches have some unwanted extra complexity, but they trade off differently. I've always been a bit skeptical of dual-core designs being commercially viable, which is an advantage of Enclave.
I love how pragmatic the watchdog pin is. I think you should be scared of bypasses though. They're coming from two sides, as well. Against bumping attacks, you want the watchdog pin to be first to reset, so that it can't get stuck in the set position while you're picking other pins. Against forced rotation of the outer core (if an attacker got access, which seems plausible), you want it to be the first to bind, so the other pins can't be decoded.
In contrast I'm really not a fan of the clocking pin, it seems so clunky. I think you should be able to just repurpose the watchdog pin to fill the same role. Make the bottom pin slightly oversized, and bring the cam down appropriately. When you want to start rotating the inner core, bring the cam up to full height. This will catch on the pin and force the inner core to rotate. To return on the other side of the cam you skip the inner step. I'm happy to explain in more detail if that wasn't clear.
I had some designs floating around my head for a manufacturable unpickable lock since a while before it became a popular topic with StuffMadeHere and co., so I'm pretty engaged in the topic and would be excited to see more forward movement in any of this. My own ideas had their own ups and downs, and I think the newer stuff I'm seeing out of your lock and Enclave is better than what I came up with.
Lock companies _are_ listening. To their shareholders. They say " make the cheapest locks you can get away with".
exactly, the product should just look like what buyers see as a lock
Absolutely fantastic series. I am so impressed by how much detail you are able to fit into these ~15 minute videos.
Can't wait to see how far can you push this design and put in on the market. Will consider buying when it is available for purchase:).
You should have way more subscribers than you currently do. The way you explain your ideas in your videos is fantastic.
Well this is all super cool, and I'm real impressed by the degree of professional engineering chops on display here - Most projects like this are presented from a way less technical perspective. For my two cents, I immediately suspect a second form of kinetic attack might be possible: By taking the opposite approach and setting all pins to the minimum height, a kinetic impact could potentially bounce the whole wafer stack around until it bound in the normal keyed position.
Make sure that the watchdog driver pin is the thightest in the whole lock. That way you cannot apply very light tension and feel/decode the stack against the shearline edge. Another way to try to make the shearline easier to feel in the stack is to push the core inwards or pull it outwards. Due tolerances required to allow the parts to move, there will be always small amount of play in every direction so all directions can be used to pick or decode the lock.
If you do succeed in foiling bumping, raking, and kinetic attacks, don't forget to try magnets. That seems to be a common way to defeat locks that resist mechanical attacks, and is often how electronic locks are defeated. I subscribed and am looking forward to your next video in this series! 🙂
i like that you try to make it as simple as possible so manufacturing would be posibble and its funny seeing how you deal with commenters
Watched all of your 3 videos. Your way to explain things with simple cardbord cutouts is incredible! Also i am impressed about the genius way to improve the lock. Instead of adding a New part i would rather use different driver pin length.
Exellent video series, all very proffesional. well planned. Great choice of project, I made a Bramah copy 40 years ago after finding a drawing in a lock book with a description on how it had remained unpicked for 61 years and finally took 51 hours. it has binding sliders. Impressive coverage of attack methods. Victorian patents are fascinating.
Please continue this, if you can. I would absolutely love to see you succeed with your design and market this product and, hopefully, displace the "security" companies by offering a product that actually works and gives us actual security rather than the illusion of security.
very professional, I hope one day the security of regular locks progresses.
Nice work, looks like you’ve got a good design. I believe the lock could still be “float picked” where careful tension control is used to hold the core just past a neutral position and different combinations attempted. It would still be a lengthy pick, testing the possibilities but could still be picked.
Thanks for the comment. I would love to understand this strategy better. With the core just past the neutral position, would be brute forcing the key combinations? Or just each of the possibilities of an individual pin stack?
@@BuiltDifferentDesigns it would depend on the feedback the lock gives. I could test a combination, move the core to test for open then manually counter rotate the core back testing each pin until I can find one that allows me to move a pin one more position and then test again. This is an extremely tedious process and time consuming so in real world scenarios it would be “practically” unpickable without knowing the bitting on the key. Unfortunately a lock with this many master wafers would struggle with reliability issues in real world uses as the thinnest wafers can flip and turn as wear and dirt are introduced to the lock. Picking can also cause this issue.
@@BuiltDifferentDesigns I would recommend sending a copy to Georgia Jim to pick if you want to see if the lock can be picked, he's picked so many locks, many that are much higher difficulty than LPL. I would recommend sending a copy to LPL to see if it's vulnerable to other attack vectors such as bypasses, but Jim is the one to see if it's vulnerable to picking.
Yes that would be time consuming and perhaps a set of tryout keys could also work. However KW1 has some limitations regrading the number of valid keys 5^6 = 7776 theoretical keys down to 6306 with a MACS of 4. That is further cut down to 2969 with impact arrest stacks in position 2 and 4 (there is nuance here). I would like to go to a KW10/KW11 or even KW5. The geometry and size of quickset pins is particularly appealing. To your second point if I do continue to pursue this idea, a study of the wear over time would be conducted to determine failure modes and monitor what wear would look like over the lifetime of the lock.
@@BuiltDifferentDesigns you could also look at other common key systems like SC4 (6 pin Schlage) which has more pin heights to give you more bitting options.
Very interesting series, and well explained. I especially liked the cardboard models that you made in the first episode.
Thanks for this series of lock evolution. Very interesting. Good job!
Definitely keep on this. I'm digging the actual in depth research. Also I wouldn't mind having a go at picking this bad boy if you're ok with it!
Damn, you only have 3 videos and 500 subs? This video was recommended to me and I only noticed halfway through, I would have never guessed that, great job and I would love to see more!
Great video, very well presented content. I hope that in the future, after a few changes in filming and editing techniques, this channel will be very popular.
This is quite interesting, when I saw things are made here design I felt like it’s too complicated, but this one is very simplistic and it seems more resilient, impressive!
Really cool project. Very well made clear videos. Was very suprised to see these were your first 3 videos. Feel like they are made by someone who hs been doing this for a while. Cheers.
This is amazing! Keep it up, the design is cool and it would be amazing to see you iterate on it and collaborate with the locksport community to refine and simplify the design.
I want this lock to be out there, even if it’s not perfect it’s a far cry better than the other locks made. Lock companies will only improve their locks if they have the competition to make the do so.
I know that not everyone lives where they can invest in the sort of security that we have to protect our home, but we have two big furry noisy solutions that don't take kindly to strangers unless we tell them to. We have to keep them charged up all the time, it's about fifty bucks a month for that, and they need attention several times a day. They need to be let outside to purge themselves, and their mommy has to escort them up and down the street in the evening to make sure nothing untoward is happening in our neighborhood, but they are very effective at securing our homestead - even when we're all here! Heck, I even love these two pieces of ancient technology like they're family and it will be a sad day when each of them breaks down and stops working. It's not cheap maintaining them, and they can be time consuming, but they're our furry boys and they aren't afraid to put in work to earn their keep.
P.S. The production quality has gone off the rails on this channel! Dial it back if it means putting more content up! ;]
I remember a lock on LPL, might have been a mod he did himself, where if you attempted to pick the lock and got it wrong, a wafer would drop into a slot and permanently jam the lock. I've always liked that approach because it leaves evidence of a break in attempt, as well as being virtually impossible to pick (equivalent to trying to guess a short password with only 1 attempt, you might get it, but almost definitely not)
Please build a working prototype. You're on a mission, a great one!
YES please keep it going!!! That is how good things are made. Someone putting his mind and attention to it!!
soy cerrajero, de argentina, pienso igual q vos, nadie se preocupa en hacer modelos mas eficientes, segui asi!!!
Kinetic attacks, I might've known. I am impressed with your design so far but it is quite an undertaking to make an unpickable lock. Once you're confident in it, definitely send this in to LPL
definitely continue this! can't wait to see these things available.
This is one of the most interesting videos in the series! Learnt a lot about different attacks. Shame it hasn't caught the same algorithm bump as the other two.
If you don't bring this to market - then releasing the design as open source, so anyone could produce them, in a way that other manufacturers couldn't patent, would be a great public service!
Though you solved the lift and rap attack, I believe the design is still vulnerable to a kinetic attack. Particularly a bumping attack done in combination with a plug spinner. In this attack unlike normal bumping tension would not be applyed before striking the pins, rotation only begins after the pins have been hit.
The plug spinner would allow the rotation of the core fast enough to reach the clocking.
While it may be possible to perform this attack with two separate tools such as a snap gun and plug spinner, the timing required makes that highly unlikely. A new tool where the two are combined would be more plausible.
As this requires new tooling to be designed, and other locks would be similarly vulnerable, I don't believe this detracts from the security of your design. Further the innovation of new tools to attack your design shows how well you have guarded against traditional attack vectors.
Well done! I hope to see this project continue, your innovation is great to see!
Looks like a shim could be inserted between the cores from the front on the lock. Not sure what that would achieve but I'd ensure there is no gap there to be safe
loving the series so far! keep it up!
Hoping to see the next iteration soon!😊
For these kinetic attacks, is there a way to put something in the core that when jiggled drops/jams the core such that it can't be rotated any further? Of course you'll need to be able to reset it such that normal operation doesn't get too thwarted...
I did just finnish watching your videos, I loved them and they are great, I have seen this kind of design for a lock before called a co-axial lock by Andy Pugh, I would call it a sleeved core, anyway I would approach it with a type of float picking method as mentioned before, it could take some time but to me it would seem possible to get it picked, keep up the great work
Absolutely savage drop at 4:36 😂🔥
I have seen a locksmith try to pick a lock in the field. It took him like 30 min, when he was trying different tools and methods of attack. Like he had a really jagged key, which he was hammering into the lock. He tried regular picking. He tried raking. He did manage to pick it, but it took him a long time, and he did make a lot of noise. And the lock was a regular European cylinder. Perhaps he wasn't as skilled as some TH-camrs. Or perhaps picking locks on the field is much more difficult than doing it in a controlled environment, but it FEELS like most locks aren't as insecure as they are made out to be... at least not the ones in Europe.
I had that once here in Australia, calling a locksmith out to get me back into my apartment. The door had a deadlatch (which I had bought from the hardware store) and a passthrough (which I'd had re-keyed to match the deadlatch). Nothing too fancy, and from memory the passthrough (doorknob) wasn't even locked.
Locksmith came out, spent a few minutes trying and failing to open the deadlatch with a pick gun (which was really loud). Then he stopped, looked at me, and said "hang on, did you say they're keyed the same?" (which I had said when he first arrived). Then he removed the barrel from the passthrough lock, took it out to his van, disassembled it, and cut me a new key to match the pinning on that barrel. Reassembled the barrel, confirmed that the key worked in that, confirmed that the key worked in the deadlatch, and then reinstalled the barrel in the passthrough. Entirely competent locksmith, no question.
Lesson for me is that locksmiths aren't necessarily skilled at lockpicking per se. And yeah I reckon LPL could have opened that deadlatch silently within half a minute, but that's because he's put a huge amount of time and effort into developing that specific skillset.
On the question of how secure most locks really are, I think the answer is that in practice most criminals aren't going to bother trying to pick the lock in the first place. They're going to go straight for a destructive attack, or an easier and/or more discreet entry point.
imagine the lock of your combined with the second lock of ,,works by design,, and the lock from ,,Stuff made here,, together. I don’t even know if this would work. You 3 should work together to make the most secure and complicated lock of all time.
I don't think he is aiming for complexity for the sake of complexity. He's trying to keep it as simple as possible as complexity requires greater adherence to tolerances. He's trying to show that lock makers could make a lock that is more secure if they really wanted to.
Complexity is a negative in this case, this lock is supposed to be capable of cheap mass production.
Andy Pugh has a similar lock design, for which he says he has applied for a patent. These BDD videos are munh more descriptive than anything I found about Andy Pugh.
1 or 2 security pins (e.g. spools or serrated pins) and varied driver springs would also help with kinetic attacks, I feel. You could also have a set pin in the back that isn't interacted by the key, but still has a taper to it, so that a kinetic attack dislodges it and binds the mid-core.
Adding a front overhang/plate to the outer core to cover the watchdog pin would also help in a mildly destructive attack, where someone shoves and breaks a piece of something under the pin to bypass it, then link the 2 corse together or just doing a traditional pick.
Good job… 1 more video and almost ready for the loyer picker guy
You’ve mentioned stuff made here, but another channel named Works By Design has also been trying their hand at an unpickable lock with some interesting techniques. Perhaps they could provide some additional inspiration for your designs.
🔒🔒🔒Very cool, I hope this blows up, you just started but I actually like these videos just as much as LPL and SMH
great design which tackles the essence of the problem. However, can you somehow test it's durability... with these more complicated pin stacks I can imagine that after 1000 openings the small disks may get stuck and lock you out entirely?
I might be mistaken but it looks like both the inner core and outer core can be accessed from the face of the lock. I'm not sure if this gives an attack vector, but I'd think for the final design only the inner core should be visible from outside of the lock housing.
love the series, you have the right mind for this! I wonder what patent barriers are there? like maybe there is a significantly better design or elements of a design (more effective, simple, easy to manufacture) already invented, but it is patented, someone is sitting on the patent so there is no hope for such an endeavor with evolutionary design iterations on the pin lock? I have no idea but something worth looking into.
I wonder if it's possible to combine the gluing and kinetic attacks together since the watchdog pin doesn't look like it has much distance to travel
great engineering and very well presented
8:40 I wouldn't expected kinetic attack to be this effective! I guess that's just another reason to avoid any springs in mechanical lock design.
I just saw your "how to build" video in my recommendations, and would like to offer my thoughts. Your design is very similar to one I suggested on a lock picker's forum a few years ago, and I doubt I was the first to think of it. A critical flaw someone pointed out that I'm surprised you haven't yet run into is that unless the tolerances between the wafers and pin stacks are very tightly controlled, it's possible for wafers to get jammed in a mis-aligned state if there's ever any slack space between them. If that were to happen in a lock, it may be impossible to ever open it again without access to the tops of the pin stacks.
I've had some other ideas for variations of "sample then test" locks if you'd be interested, but I'm not sure how best to share them.
I'm curious if you used security pins as master and driver, because I didn't notice it in the manufacturing video. I think that they can make impact attacks less effective. Regardless, nice lock!
I think you could prevent drilling attacks if you make a rotating plate at the very beginning, which would rotate freely with the borers and install some carbide pins in the lock itself. But I don't know if there are any disadvantages
Suppose that you did attach the core to the mid core in someway (e.g. wedging as mentioned). Then, even though the watchdog pin will prevent standard picking, would it not be possible to bump the lock until you set the watchdog pin and THEN pick the lock as normal?
Really nice clean design. In the vein of a few other locks that have been proposed of late focused on separating the testing from the setting. I think the two parts of your design that make it less commercially viable than it would appear are as follows.
1) In its current form it is a one way lock so you can not lock the bolt using the key. limits the applications
2) is the size of the core, Making new hardware to fit a new cylinder is not a commercially viable thing to do at this point in the lock business.
Not being able to lock the deadbolt with a key is a bigger issue than you might expect. Rental property owners deliberately use a deadbolt along with a passage doorknob (doorknob does not lock) so that the renters cannot lock themselves out without using the key. The key might still get lost or stolen, but otherwise the renter can’t be locked out accidentally.
I got some ideas on possible solutions to the decoding and bumping attacks:
6:29 you could change the length of the hole to be different long, which would eleminate the need of these extra pins. Sure these can be added additionally for more manufactorable variants but wouldnt be specificly required.
9:54 instead of moving pin stacks with longer travel, how about changing the springs to ones which physically cannot be compressed far enough for the master pin as you called it to be lifted over the second shear line? Meaning the minimal length is still so long that even in the worst case aka pin jumping as high as possible the shear line cannot be cleared leading the termination of that attack vector
I would be curious to see the lift and rap attack tried with a vibratory tool instead. It may still be able to jump the master pins. It's not a vector I would expect someone attacking the lock off the street to take but it'd be interesting to see
The lesson you can learn from this is to fix your failures, just because it's weak to this attack it doesn't mean you can't fix it
Could you use some kind of spring, to avoid kinetic attacks, at the very top above the new imagined inverse-master pins?
Cant wait to see how this all pans out. I think youre on the right track 👍
This is one of the best series on locks I've seen on TH-cam. Thank you for your hard work! I would love to see this lock in production, and before that, purchase a prototype to play with. Any chance I could get one?
Gotta say, I learned more about locks from watching your 3 videos than I did dozens of LPL videos!
Scary to see how simple of a solution you made. If this is all thats needed to drastically improve it then modern locks are a scam
Here's an extra idea for you to think about. If percussion attacks work on joggling the pins until something lines up, how about adding some extra protection pins around the shear line that are actually held on weak springs and end just fractionally clear of the shear line say at 120 degree intervals around the circumference. Banging the lock, whilst you may line the tumblers up for a millisecond would likely also vibrate one of the protection pins into the shear line, jamming it in place for the same millisecond and thus defeating a percussion attack. Not sure if I have explained this very well, hopefully you get the idea.
About the impacts this wiggles thing in one direction at each impact, if you had 2 security pins at 90 degrees would that help?
This is perhaps a dumb question but I might as well ask it.
I've noticed that you lock the deadbolt from the "inside" part of the lock and not with the key itself. Is it just not possible to lock the deadbolt from the "outside" with the current design?
Wouldn't having a single pin stack where topper-pin + driver-pin + key-pin are larger than the area above the mid-core be enough to prevent the attack with the hammer?
Am I missing something?
when you tried the bump attack, you place the lock "upside down", with the pin facing down, will it be as efficient with the pins facing up ? If not, it can be a requirement for this lock when installed
total newbie here. My ideas are probably stupid, but I can think of two things:
1. can you use coils with different coefficients? I mean, one coil slightly harder than the order? So they will jump different heights when bumped.
2. instead of a coil pushing the pins down can you have a coil in the bottom part, cleverly mounted to pull the pins down? pull instead of push. A strong magnet pushing a special pin down?
Just some ideas.
Would you be able to stop attackers from putting tension on the lock and perform impact attacks by making the locks pins rest on a false set? (hope it makes sense)
I’m missing why the wafers are necessary. They always introduce weakness. Also, could a second watchdog pin be added at an opposing angle? That could help with kinetic attacks.
The wafers are there to transfer the lift pattern above the core shear line before the mid-core is allowed to rotate and "test" lift against the key pins at the outer shear line. The idea here is that once the core starts rotating, wafers are locked into position by the core shear, making any further pin manipulations impossible until the core is reset.
I had the exact same idea a few years ago, probably described it in a LPL comment back then. I also had another variant of this where leaf springs are used to transfer lift between the key-side pins and shear-side pins to completely eliminate the mechanical connection. Though this would require having separate sets of springs for the two core layers, which would make the core stupidly large and difficult to put together.
Would having different spring force on each pin stack make vibration stacks more difficult?
Yes, it should, specifically stiffer springs
Would it be possible to just add springs on top of the pins? That way kinetic attacks wouldn't work since the force would have to fight against the springs.
Great design. Elegant even
Watchdog attack:
- Lift the watchdog pin by inserting a long tool and pushing it up, fixing it in place (glue or wedging)
- Attach core and midcore together (glue or wedging)
- With the separation of setting and testing thwarted, regular lockpicking may commence
Would it be susceptible to brute force, "reverse" single pin picking? One could set the pins in the shallowest positions, turn the core to testing position, and slowly turn it back out while pushing the pins so they can selectively raise each pin with every attempt of the "testing" phases until a combination works.
Not sure how to apply it in practice and it'll be like trying to brute force a hard-to-turn combination lock, but anyways such a vulnerability (if it even practically exists) is far from being a point of concern.
The use of so many master wafers seems like it will make the lock somewhat vulnerable to dirt and wear
I’m no expert but I feel with all these smart parts in a lock, there are a lot that can go wrong. The tiny little disk pins could tip over and lock up. You mentioned in another video that machines are not precise and perfect, this also makes the lock more prone to jams in my eyes. You also mentioned that it’s impossible to get the pins over the sheer line, but there are tools that pass a wire thru them. The wire is insert further in so that it can push the pins above the line. I believe Sparks and Code made a tool like one I just mentioned.
While the disc pins /could/ turn, it's nor something you would expect for a few reasons, A. it's marketed as a door lock so the normative forces are limited, B. it's under load from the springs, C they're in a column,
All of which is too say even if they shift slightly they'll be pushed back, a worse? case is using a malformed key and them getting gummy in the lock turning, but again they'll naturally realign because they are in the __ form, they need a LOT of space to get to the I, or even /, and in that case they would still be prone to going flat again if jossled because the key pins are blocks N that can't be turned sideways.
All of this is assuming the wafers are thin enough that they can be turned at all. if it's I==I the thickness will stop turning like any of the larger pins.
🤔I have a question: why are there so many master wafers, instead of an appropriately-sized single pin? I didn't see any explanation in the first video, but I might have zoned out, or been distracted by my dog. Is it to stop the pins binding the middle cylinder to the bottom cylinder?
Sorry I'm late to the vids! Also, where's the Patreon? If you're spending a couple hundred dollars 💸 on brass prototypes, I'd love to chip in a bit! 🙇♂
Thanks for the comment. The wafers allow for the lock to be put into many false heights to be tested by the driver. Hope that helps
"Separating the setting from the testing". Along these lines, I have wondered if it would be possible to use serrated pins to solve the setting/testing separation problem. When you start to turn the key, there is no initial resistance at all, but the serrations slide into grooves that lock the pins into place. Only after the pins are locked in place is any testing performed with some additional rotation. The fineness of the serrations and mating grooves would limit the number of possible key cuts, though.
I absolutely love this lock design, it’s simplicity, it’s ease of manufacturability, it’s thought about pin compatibility. However, your design I think may have one issue, your lock body might not be compatible with some lock housings because of how beefy your lock body is. So you might not be able to install your lock on some standard housings like an Abus housing or some other standard housings. I’d be interested to see if you could design your lock to be more flexible in this regard.
This might go against making designs simpler a bit but could an alternative solution to kinetic attacks be to make the wafers and pins magnetic? That way bumping them etc wont dislodge or bounce the pins and wafers inside. They can still be pushed up and down and be separated by turning the cores and shearing them apart, but they won't separate by simply bumping, etc.