by raimundo » 14 May 2008 8:55
The ace picks do open them,but its never easy. lube should help. but as I said in another thread, be very careful of getting lube transfered to the pick as it will lubricate the sliders and make things difficult.
with locks like abloy and medeco, people have tried many things such as make up keys, determinator keys, etc.
I think there is some use for tools made up to fit the aceII locks that are more sophisticated than the sliders tool.
Some have worked on bump keys, but thats probably an attempt to make a cheap solution that is only half effective.
These locks have thier pins exposed, you could literally use seven different picks at once. (actually thats what the slider thing does)
My belief is that tools could be made to make opening an ACE II very effective. We know the spacing and the cuts.
It is the nature of these locks that even when locked, one or more pins can actually be in a picked state. easy to test with a probe.
Just as drilling a straight line of holes along a plug core has its tolerances, the ACE locks have a number of exploitable tolerances, It is not possible to drill the holes in a circle and get it perfect. Our OP mentioned that he turned the lock one eight turn and it relocked, but the pick then worked well, the likely thing that happened is that when turned an eighth of a turn, the holes are not perfectly aligned and some of the pins are not relocking.
The shear line in ace locks seems to have some play, I believe that the stem movement has some in and out, tolerance in its fit to the bible. which allows the shear line to open up a bit. and this is to make sure that the keys will fit without problems. grip an ace lock stem and pull it to see if the stem moves while the bible remains pinned to the body of the lock,
this stem movement could be used if there were a way to grab it and pull back while impressioning the tubular tool. possibly a tool that can tighten on the stem when necessary and then easily release when the pull test is over.
Another design idea that I have thought of but not yet made involves sliders that fit into brass tubes like the old time ballpoint refill, this tube fits the flint spring from a bic lighter,
Just as sliders are held to the tube of the pick, these brass tubes with sliders that are counter sprung so that the lock spring is facing the bic lighter spring, and the tube that the bic spring is in can be adjusted for tension by sliding the brass tube back and forth, with the 7 tubes being held on to the tubular base by rubber O rings, so that the whole brass tube can be moved forward to put more of the tension of the spring inside it on the pins, or can be moved back to lighten the counter tension on the ACEII springs.
People should think about adapting some of the methods used on inline pin tumblers to use them on this kind of keyway.
I think there is a lot of possiblities here. Start brainstorming.
and not have problems of tight tolerances,
Wake up and smell the Kafka!!!
