Collecting data on pin tumblers and springs, please help!

[tacit_guardian]

Hi All,

In regards to this post:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=60024

I am attempting to gather some data on the internals of pin tumbler locks. I'm after the dimensions and masses of driver and key pins. If you have the ability or knowledge to evaluate the springs for their spring constant (or spring rate, or whatever data you can gather really) I would really appreciate it. Also if we have any machinists or other mechanically minded people, measurements of pin bore diameters and offset from the centerline etc I would really appreciate that. I'm going to try to collect all of the locks I can to take measurements, but this is going to require several hundred data points to develop a useful statistical model.

At the conclusion of this research I will be releasing all of my work to the community here.

Step 1 is to develop a computational physics simulation of the inside of a pin tumbler lock, with the pins, drivers, and springs.

Step 2 is to model binding and the factors involved.

Step 3 is to generate a model of a Bogo/triple-peak and get that working with the above.

Step 4 is to then generate a field of virtual locks based on steps 1 and 2, with as many variations as we can manage (up to the limit of computational complexity for my systems)

Step 5 is to then apply the model developed in Step 3 to the field developed in Step 4, and evaluate different bogo designs against thousands of different virtual locks to evaluate bogo design.

The results of each step will be released to the community, so that we can design better locks, and better picks.

But to do all of this, I need your help. I need as much data on tumblers, springs, pin bores, and the rest as we can come up with. This will be available to the community as well, of course, should you wish to use it.

Thanks very much for your help everyone.

TG

[Comrade627]

Not gonna lie this makes me want to buy a labcoat more than ever.

I can take some measurements also.

[cheerIO]

I think what you are looking for are depth and spacing measurements:

http://sac.user.atomicradi.us/home/Main/LockPinSizes

http://www.locksafesystems.com/depth_and_space.htm

I'm not sure that pin mass is going to help you much. If a lock has been rekeyed the pins may be different and could be a different material altogether than the factory. Anti drill pins could be randomly inserted into a lock also which would throw measurements off.

Also, I know for a fact spring rate is going to vary beyond what would be helpful. So many times springs are crushed, kinked, replaced, or just old. There would be no way to get a consistent measurement if the lock wasn't brand new.

[billdeserthills]

I'm not sure what you are after, but the springs used in common pin tumbler locks (schlage, kwikset, defiant, ect...) are .115" in diameter, so are the pin tumblers The heights are listed in the pin kit You are using
Spacing for schlage and kwikset/defiant are .156 however that number changes with many pin tumbler locks, which is why all brands should not all be keyed on the same key spacing
Springs & pins used in IC Core small body are .108" in diameter

[tacit_guardian]

I'm not sure that pin mass is going to help you much. If a lock has been rekeyed the pins may be different and could be a different material altogether than the factory. Anti drill pins could be randomly inserted into a lock also which would throw measurements off.

I can take that into a account in the model, the insertion of steel pins. Also, mass is actually very important as it allows the calculation of resonant frequencies of the spring/driver/keypin "system". I can account for that locks have been re-keyed, as I intend to generate a field of thousands of differently keyed virtual locks, with not only many different keypins, but variations on mechanical tolerance, surface roughness, number of pins, etc.

Also, I know for a fact spring rate is going to vary beyond what would be helpful. So many times springs are crushed, kinked, replaced, or just old. There would be no way to get a consistent measurement if the lock wasn't brand new.

I can also account for this in the model as well. This is actually critical that we get a good cross-section of what springs are out there, both new and used, from several different manufacturers and re-pinning kits. Because once we get enough samples, it's pretty easy to create a population of springs with many different characteristics. I would say that if anything, I am expecting the springs to have the most impact on the performance of the model in "virtual raking".

For those not sure about what I'm talking about, springs (to a first order approximation) follow Hooke's law: F = -kX. This means that spring force F equals minus the spring constant k (because the spring is trying to act opposite to the force, it's resisting) times the physical distance it has been compressed or elongated X. Now as the springs in a lock are under slight compression to begin with, we'll have to take this into account.

The spacing and diameter data is very useful guys, thanks for that because it will allow me to generate a mechanical model later on that is more accurate, which will be helpful for people trying to visualize what the computation has spit out.

I've already started generating "virtual locks" with dummy data. Right now I have a three dimensional field, with spring values along one axis, pin values along another axis, and number of pin stacks along the third. It takes a little less than a minute to generate a field of 4076 locks on my old workstation. For the actual experiment I intend to do more, as I want to start approaching the total field of every possible keying. But right now I'm just making sure that my code works properly.

Thanks all for your help, and keep it coming!

Cheers
TG