Medeco Cam locks

[somenewguy]

I was doing some research about Medexo ARX pins and the Medecoder tool and there was an off-hand reference to how the "Medeco cam locks were never vulnerable to this attack". I think this was mentioned in NDE Magazine #4.

Can someone explain why this is?

[MacGnG1]

look at this thread to see a breakdown of a medeco cam lock: http://www.lockpicking101.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=43297

as you can see, the pins are very different.

[somenewguy]

Ahhh, thanks - I see now; no top pins, just positions of the drilled holes on the sides of the pins where the sidebar fingers can drop in...
Since they were discrete holes and not slots, I see how the Medecoder tool would have not worked on the cam locks.

Makes sense now!

[somenewguy]

I assume Medeco makes regular cam locks with a threaded shank on the rear to retrofit into tool boxes, cabinets, etc. However, I found some cheap ones



but there is nothing on the back of the lock to attach a cam to. It looks like the slit on the back was supposed to interface with a tab in some product.

Anyway, does anyone know what these were for and possibly how to retrofit them to a useful application?

[spandexwarrior]

There are thousands of custom Medeco products out there, never seen that one though. Take a look at their industrial security catalog, it has some of this stuff.

-Brian

[somenewguy]

There are thousands of custom Medeco products out there, never seen that one though. Take a look at their industrial security catalog, it has some of this stuff.

-Brian

Thank you for that tip! I found the catalog and the cam locks and their options are fairly well laid out in that document. The ones I had seen are the classic style 5-pin Medecos with a single mounting flat on the shell. They are new in the package but I think they are old stock from the 1980s. There is no threaded portion on the rear of the plug assembly to take a cam. Their PN is 60-1050; the 1050 model is not in the chart in the Industrial Security catalog, which suggests these were probably custom? Or maybe they are an old model no longer made... They have three key pull locations, which is a little weird (there is no 'stop' disk [item 4 on the diagram] so they rotate continuously with keypulls at 9, 12, and 3 o'clock). Another oddity is that the Medeco logo is upside-down (I guess these were intended to be mounted with the key pins pointing up).