A few weeks ago, we tested the Quick Key Easy Pro kit from Multipick, which turned out to work very well for duplicating a BKS Janus key and even a DOM Diamant key.

This time, we wanted to see if you really need such as expensive kit. First, we focus on the metal. Can we use cheap rose metal we obtained from the internet? We use the moulds we created earlier. The answer: yes, this works fine, for both keys. Our first attempt failed as the two halfs of the mould were not properly aligned, but that is “operator error”.

Next, we try to see if there are alternatives to the moulding material. We use cuttlebone, that is also used by silver smiths. We use a standard key to start with. The duplicate looks promising, but does not work. Again, we blame the alignment of the two parts of the mould. Some further testing is necessary. The cuttlebone is too brittle to be used in combination with the holder from the Multipick kit.

Although at Toool, we normally pick locks without having a key, it is also interesting to occasionally look at other ways of opening a lock. I got my hands on a Quick Key Easy Pro kit from Multipick (not affiliated) and decided to test it out. I took it to the Toool meeting with three locks to test it out on.

First up was a BKS Janus lock. I combines the two substances to make the mould, but spent too much time kneading it, it was already partially hardened when I wanted to press the key in. The second try, I hurried up a bit more and it worked nicely. I heated up a pellet of metal and poured it in the mould.

After a short wait, out came the key.

This key is quite sturdy and is thus easy to create using this technique. But the tolerances are quite small. Does the key work?

Yes, it does! And that for the first key I am making with this kit. I’m impressed. Because this key was a success, I decided to take on an even bigger challenge and duplicate a DOM Diamant key. This key is very hard to duplicate, as it has very thin pieces of metal going down the key. The first attempt yielded a key that was incomplete. The metal had not gone all the way in. I melted that key again, made it slightly warmer and tried again. The second time, the key that came out had a hole in the middle, but it had metal in all the important places. And what do you know: this key worked first time around!

Jos made a video of me duplicating the key. I hope you enjoy watching as much as I enjoyed copying the key. Sorry for talking Dutch in the video 🙂

Walter.

This is amazing. Our German friend ‘Decoder’ just came out with a video showing the first 3D printed bumpkey (made of nylon).

Here is the youtube video:

Companies have been offering 3D-printing services for keys for a while now. Apparently, not everybody is aware of this, so when Jos talked about this at HOPE, it caused a bit of a stir. Wired wrote an article about it that you can read at http://www.wired.com/2014/07/keyme-let-me-break-in/.

The article describes professional key duplication services. A few weeks ago, TOOOL member Tom decided to spend an afternoon to see if he could make a model of a standard key to be printed on a cheap consumer grade 3D printer. Here is the first result:

And here’s a picture of two printed keys with an original. The cuts were measured and printed.

Here you see the key is working, although you can feel you have to be careful not to apply too much force.

The thing the consumer grade printer has most problems with, it first printing separate blobs of plastic that only connect to the rest of the key as the profile is being printed. This means the key had to be lightly filed after printing, to make it operate the lock.