Electric Scissor --> Electric Pick Gun?

[technik]

yeh, Iknow ebay should lighten up. I mean A KEY CUTTER! They should be worrying about all the thousands of "ebook" ripp offs, that sell for like 3 cents, and which clog up lock searches WAY too much.

When will they learn...

[pick_maker]

Some new developments:
I upgraded the power supply from 3 to 6 volts using two 3-volt photo batteries. On this particular scissor all I had to do was carve out the battery bay and cover a little because 3 volt batteries are slightly larger than 2 AA's. A piece of 2 inch celo tape holds the cover on nicely. I used a broken scanner antenna wire, trimmed and bent to force the batteries in snug. I had to replace the blade screw and drill another forward hole. Washers and nuts are needed too, or the pick will wobble off during operation.


The insides of the sicssors. Looks pretty straight forward. Note the bend on the motor's drive shaft. This bend or crook causes the up and down movement of the cutting blade- that's it. Because the power supply had been doubled from 3 volts to six, the groove in the soft plastic material wore out and the vibration angle is now at 2 degrees. At normal 3 volts the angle was about 5-8 degrees. Despite the damage I was still able to pick some wafer locks successfully. What I'll do next is slap some epoxy putty into the damaged area to restore the original groove.


Using the top straight pick I noticed only the first two pins responded to the pick vibrations. Changing the pick angle lets more pins come into contact with the pick.



All in all, this is an effective expedient electro-pick, considering the cost and that hardware is being used far outside it's designed purpose. It performs best on wide keyways with large pins and wafer locks. A big drawback is its lack of durablity.

[Romstar]

Let me save you some grief from a guy who has been there.

Skip the epoxy, make a metal replacement blade. Use a circlip retainer on the end of the motor shaft.

To prevent maring the blade contact, use a teflon or nylon bushing if you can get one. The really small ones can be hard to find sometimes.

If you can't make the whole blade, reinforce the plastic with a metal insert. Use epoxy to hold the metal reinforcement.

Install a sliding variable resistor in place of the slide switch.

Use a 9 volt battery. Place a capacitor across the motor to prevent burnout.

If you know how to wire one up, use a standard 555 timer to create a pulse circuit. Add a capacitor/resistor network with multi position switch to the circuit to determine pulse duration and spacing.

Good luck,
Romstar

[Mad Mick]

You can get an engineers notebook dedicated to the 555 from Radio Shack.

[pick_maker]

Arright!! Thanks for the info. I tried the reinforced metal insert- 1/8" brass tubing. I cut a slot down the length and it fits snugly on the plastic ridge in the photo. Holding up well for now.

Another thing: Not all electro scissors are the same. I found a different brand which seemed weak during operation. I thought the batteries, also bought at the dollar store, were weak- turns out there's a bigger motor inside and three 3-volts fit snugly with usual modifications.