self defrosting lock

[dls]

Take a lock drill a hole in the back and fit a small heating element then place two contacts for a 9v pp3 battery on the front, when the lock freezes the owner goes to a shop and buys a battery plugs it into the front of the lock and waits a couple of mins then removes the battery and opens the lock. the element could have a simple bimetalic strip to regulate the element and preventing overheating, it could be made small and cheaply aswell as easily integrated into many existing lock designs

[dls]

I suppose some ideas are just a little too different

[vov35]

doesn't seem worth the effort.

[dls]

maybe on the north pole but i doubt the penguins carry lockpicks so probably no point in having a lock

[vov35]

did you just say NORTH POLE? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin#In_popular_culture

anyway... 'bout those locks...

[dls]

Im a locksmith not a marine biologist
Ill have to do my homework in future
This year the temp dropped to nearly -20 c in Dublin I built an igloo in the garden and i got my first ever callout for a frozen lock in nearly 20 years, when i got there it was full of superglue.

[Wizer]

Here in the north, locks do freeze in winter a lot. Usually you get away with a squirt of anti-freezing lock oil. But when it has rained in the evening, and freezes in the night, the lock could be really just a lump of ice.
I think it would not be practical to have an electric heater in every lock. But if you have many locks that are exposed to weather it could be practical to carry a heatable keyblank in the winter. I don´t know if it is sold anywhere.

[dls]

if the pins are frozen then it would be a slow process to get the heated key in i think
a couple of model gloplugs would work

[SunWukong]

I wonder if it would be possible to incorporate ice into the actual locking mechanism? Instead of having pins, you have empty cylinders that get filled with ice, preventing the plug from rotating. A gadolinium interior would allow you to use magnetic refrigeration to freeze water instantly and heating coils could vaporize the ice pretty quickly and would be activated by a keypad. The major advantage is that it would be virtually impossible to pick a frozen lock; even if you chiseled away the ice in the keyway or took a blowtorch to it, the ice in the cylinders would be protected and continue to prevent access to the door. The major downsides would be the prohibitively high amount of energy required to freeze, cool, and melt ice, the cost of gadolinium alloys, the weaknesses of the ice against destructive entry methods, and the problems that electronic locks face. It’s really much better to just connect the keypad to a mechanism to retract the deadbolt and be done with it, but your original post made me consider it. If anyone has a better/more efficient way to use ice in a lock that makes it plausible, I’d be interested to hear it.

[SunWukong]

Hmm, I just thought of a way to vastly improve this setup, actually. Like a standard pin and tumbler lock the lock would have a plug in a shell and be able to move freely when the door is being opened, but that movement would be obstructed without the proper code. Instead of having pins manipulated by a key and can be picked, the plug has holes drilled, as if for pins, which are instead filled with mercury. At high temperatures the mercury is fluid and the lock can be freely rotated. As low temperatures, the mercury is solid and prevents access to the lock (which is turned via a manual thumb-turn). A layer of aerogel stands between the lock’s mechanics and the outside, preventing the system being thawed by an outside source like a blowgun. While it still suffers from energy constraints and security issues related to the electrical part of the lock, it is now impossible to force open (with the ice lock, a strong enough torque would break the ice. Solid mercury is approximately as strong as the materials with which pins are usually made).

[iWhacko]

How about a glass cylinder between the outside and the rotating cilinder. When you use the wrong key or try to pick it, it breaks. When that happens, some other pins break free, and lock the cilinder in place
Makes the lock useless.. but still

[Lock Jock]

Or, since you have to carry around something anyway, you could just use one of these, which have been around for a long time: http://www.nexusgadgets.com/hot-key-loc ... 16187.html

[RigaMortice]

Take a lock drill a hole in the back and fit a small heating element then place two contacts for a 9v pp3 battery on the front, when the lock freezes the owner goes to a shop and buys a battery plugs it into the front of the lock and waits a couple of mins then removes the battery and opens the lock. the element could have a simple bimetalic strip to regulate the element and preventing overheating, it could be made small and cheaply aswell as easily integrated into many existing lock designs

Couldn't this tackle glue attacks effectively as well? I'd like to think so.

I saw some tool on a trade site (SKS, Duffells.. one of those can't remember). It melted glue out of cylinders very quickly according to the description.

Sounded rather nice, but in all honesty it looked like a glorified blue flame lighter.

That said I'd imagine locksmiths their own methods of dealing with glue vandalism but maybe your design can double up as that? Maybe added to an 'Anti-x' euro?

I wanted to reply to this on joining because I remember seeing it and thinking it was a clever idea

[dll932]

I just spray WD40 or TriFlow in the locks more often in winter-as much as once a week. BTW, if you have a power source, a blow dryer works very fast (played over the lock area). When I drove a service truck with a 110V generator I carried one.

[Quickpicknpay]

A good soldering iron with a keyblank wired to the end would defrost in a couple of minutes. A little portable blowtorch like what chefs use would make quick work of a frozen lock too. I don't think i'll ever see one of these in Australia though