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:
Printing your own nylon bumpkeys
August 2nd, 20143D printing of keys
July 26th, 2014Companies 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.
TOOOL at HOPE X
July 23rd, 2014
The tenth Hackers On Planet Earth conference has just been held in New York, USA. One of the topics has been lockpicking and people from TOOOL-US as well as Jos from TOOOL-NL have been demonstrating the sport. He can be seen on the right in the picture that Hackaday put online at http://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/hope-x-lock-picking-and-lock-sport/. The official homepage of HOPE is http://www.hope.net/.
Update: video (over 3 hours!) at http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/hopex1/videos/57118496.
Dates for LockCon 2014: September 19/20/21
July 1st, 2014
The weekend of September 19/20/21 we will be in the good old youth hostel in Sneek for another edition of LockCon.
More information can be found here and the request for talks / presentations is open!
This year, we have three full days, so there is more time for interesting lectures and workshops. Of course, the Dutch Open lockpicking and impressioning championships will also be held during LockCon.
Start of a new era!
June 19th, 2014Since July, 2006, Barry Wels has been publishing great stuff about locks and security on his blog, Blackbag. May, 2014, he decided to stop.
Barry Wels is founder and long-time president of Toool, The Open Organisation of Lockpickers. In August, 2013, he stepped down from the Toool board to focus on his new company. I am the new president of Toool since then.
Barry has very kindly given Toool the opportunity to take over blackbag. We will be trying to get some interesting lock-related content on here in the near future! And there’s more good news: all the old content will remain available.
I would like to thank Barry for his outstanding work and hope to see all of you around on Blackbag in the years to come.
Walter Belgers
President Toool
End of an era
May 9th, 2014
Becoming the first impressioning world champion really paved the way to become a full time lock-professional. After that I left my comfort zone and signed a contract with Lockmasters Technologies, Inc in 2012. I am one of their European distributors and assist them in any way I can (working from Amsterdam). So far it has been a dream come true.
Besides the work for Lockmasters Technologies, Inc I run some lock-related classes from Amsterdam (and on location in Europe) with my private company Wels Security Solutions / Lock-Experts.com.
Last but not least my company “intact locksmith services” opens doors, safes and cars in a non-destructive way. In reality I forward a lot of the intact support calls to locksmith colleagues that do have time to take the job. So working for Intact has my lowest priority but is a nice way to keep my skills sharp and stay in touch with what happens in the real world.
I could never have come this far without the help of my friends in the locksport community. I am very fortunate with the friends I have made over the years. And I am happy to see that others have made the step to the lock industry as well. Just to name two: Han Fey and Dr. Torsten Quast are now working for Assa Abloy, the largest lock manufacturer in the world. It is my believe many “lock enthusiasts” will follow…
I decided to transfer my Toool (NL) leadership position in 2013. New Toool president Walter Belgers and vice president Jos Weyers are perfect for the job and have my full trust and support.
One of the things they did is to extend LockCon by one full day. The dates for the three day event are: September 19/20/21. This is the weekend before the security show in Essen (to encourage international travelers to come). The extra day will be used for more presentations and workshops and I am already looking forward to attend it. The LockCon request for talks / presentations is open.
The end of an era
All good things come to an end and so does this weblog. This is the last post before it closes.
This does not mean I will be completely off the radar. Lockmasters Technologies, Inc just started a newsletter that I am contributing to. I am sure you will enjoy some of the articles there.
And there is the regularly updated “Intact locksmith services” facebook site for you to visit and “like” (thank you!).
I have not made up my mind what to do with BlackBag’s content. If you want to capture any of the information: the blog will be at least up until September and I will make a decision after that.
Thank you for your interest and support over the years.
Feel free to contact me for anything related to locks and security.
Blackbag signing out.
Transporting safes
December 17th, 2013Jord Knaap from KJS tools has come out with a new line of products in his 2014 catalog.
With one of his products he solves a problem that is encountered by safe-technicians around the world: how to transport a heavy safe with just one person? Or how to transport a heavy safe without a specialized hydraulic van?
Jord solved this with his KJS-safe transporter. And I really like it a lot!
With this simple tool just one person can transport a heavy safe. As you can see in the video it’s pretty simple to load and unload and transport it. The nice thing is that you can also use it for transporting other objects the size of a euro-pallet.
Jord does not have all his tools available online. If you are a safe-tech (or high-end locksmith) and want his new ‘2014 catalog’ I suggest you contact him directly.
LockCon Preliminary schedule
November 13th, 2013This year’s theme for lockcon is the “makers view”. We have some of the best speakers in the field and it promises to be interesting as ever before.
On Friday people are welcome in the hostel from 15:00 on and dinner is served at 19:00.
Around 20:30 there is the opening speech followed by a ‘who is who’.
Saturday breakfast is served between 08:00 and 09:00
09:00 – 12:00 Peter Field will give one of his famous presentations about high-security locks
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:30 Michael Huebler about the current state of The Open Source Lock
13:30 – 15:30 Prioritizing Pick Designs by Christina Palmer. An illustrated presentation and open discussion of picks and turners design.
16:00 – 17:00 ******* (No Press: presenter asked not to be mentioned on public site)
17:00 – 17:30 Warren Rockley: UAP locks, their security features and how to pick them.
17:30 Dinner
19:30 Alexandre Triffault about Moveable element in keys, how it works, it it’s defeated
20:00 Alexandre Triffault Abloy protec : duplicating a key from a photography and the use of a 3D printer
20:30 Impressioning championships. Abus was kind to sponsor the event again with locks and blanks.
Sunday
08:00 – 09:30 breakfast
09:30 – 11:00 Ken Person will demonstrate some of his opening tools and talk about their design.
11:30 Start “Dutch Open” lockpick championships
12:30 – 13:30 lunch
13:30 – 15:30 finals “Dutch Open”
16:00 Closing ceremonies
17:00 Diner
There will also be a Toool memberships meeting (ALV) on Friday. At this meeting the new Toool president Walter Belgers and vice President Jos Weyers will inform the members about the way Toool-NL will be run.
We are almost fully booked btw. If you did not receive a mail from Jos a couple of days ago please make sure to mail registration2013@lockcon.com to confirm your stay!
*Updated the schedule. Somehow the talks of Michael and Alex were missing in the timeline.
Dates for LockCon 2013: November 22/23/24
August 5th, 2013Mark your calendars, we have a date for LockCon 2013.
The weekend of November 22/23/24 we will be in the good old youth hostel in Sneek for another edition of LockCon.
More information can be found here and the request for talks / presentations is open!
One of the topics will be me resigning as president of Toool. At the OHM conference Walter and Jos became the new Toool president and vice president.
The reason for me leaving is that I am currently very busy with my full-time job. More about that later. First we have to get LockCon going. If you want to visit or give a presentation please email us at registration2013@lockcon.com
* Edited August 11: put the correct e-mail address in place (Thank you Emiel!)
intact-noodopening.nl logo contest (update)
January 14th, 2013As some of you might know I run a small 24/7 locksmith in the Amsterdam area called Intact-Noodopening.nl
The idea behind intact is to open locks, doors, cars and safes without damaging the lock. Basically I am being paid to practice in the field what I teach in my classes.
Truth is that at this moment not a whole lot of work is coming trough. And I outsource most of it since I simply do not have much time.
Never the less I decided I needed a good logo for this venue. Instead of annoying my standard logo designer I took another route: putting it for bid on 99 designs.com . So far there are three designs thar stick out.
Can you help me by selecting the logo you like for a locksmith that specializes in non-destructive entry?
*UPDATE: The designers listened to some of the input and created better versions. Please have another look.
Thanks in advance!