laser Cutter?

[lockpicking101nz]

Over the years I have made many Lock Picks. I do enjoy making them myself, but they do take time if you want them to be of high quality.

I found a little bit of information on the net about laser cutters and etchers, and I was wondering if it would be possible to use one of these to make many picks out of a large sheet of metal. I would be much faster than making them by hand, although it could be expensive: http://www.themetalman.com/laser.html

If a laser cutter could not cut the right type of material, maby something like this would work:
http://www.dcwaterjet.com/
It may be worth it if you could make, say, 30-50 picks at a time.

Perhaps a laser etcher could make very nice designs for handles.

Anyway, just an idea.

[ady1989]

Last time I checked a good waterjet system was $100,000 (the base model too). A laser cutter might be less, but still very expensive. It all depends on how much you are willing to pay for being able a nice and fast set of picks. It would be quite hard making the money you spent on the tools back just by selling lockpicks especially when there are a lot of companies doing so already. I will stick to making them by hand for now .

[lockpicking101nz]

I dont mean buying the machine. There are many companies that own one already that will cut out a design for you for a small price.

[maintenanceguy]

I've had small parts lazer cut and cut out of sheet by a cnc machine that used a tiny end mill to make the cuts.

It's been several years and I don't remember the details. Some of the parts were aluminum and some were polycarbonate and they couldn't do poly on one of the machines which is why we went with a company that had the other.

But we found the companies in the thomas registers (this was when they were a volume of paper books that would fill a book shelf, before the online version) and sent them a cad file on floppy disk and the faxed us a quote.

At the time, a run of only a few thousand pieces was pennies each. These were small semi-circular rings less than 3/4" across and approx 1/8" thick.

[raimundo]

Mainguy, are you saying that the company called 'small parts' did this or have you not named that company that you used?

[maintenanceguy]

No, I don't remember the company names. This was several years ago. But You can find lots, probably hundreds, of companies that can do this in the Thomas Registers.

[kg4boj]

The most inexpensive form of fabrication I can reccomend that might meet what your looking for is a turret punch.... cheap? can we say uber cheap? Cheap to the point of where all your paying for is cost of material and a small fee that you pay no matter what machine you use.

[dougfarre]

if you want companies to bid on a materials project for you, you can goto MFG.com and set up an account. I have worked with them before to get bids on large amounts of picks to be produced. There are lots of small companies with different types of technologies that that you can explore.

[mh]

You can also have a look at
http://www.emachineshop.com/

They have a downloadable CAD tool that will do an actual quote for you.
Seems to be rather expensive, though.

Cheers,
mh