Can anyone tell me how to make a medeco cutaway?

[south town ninja]

I'm thinking of turning my medeco biaxial mortise into a cutaway. Can anyone tell me how to? I realize there's a lot of extra metal there, but i have a dremel, a some cutting wheels, and a lot of patience. I've made cutaways before, but only on conventional pin tumblers, nothing with a side bar and i don't want to screw it up.

[Squelchtone]

I'm thinking of turning my medeco biaxial mortise into a cutaway. Can anyone tell me how to? I realize there's a lot of extra metal there, but i have a dremel, a some cutting wheels, and a lot of patience. I've made cutaways before, but only on conventional pin tumblers, nothing with a side bar and i don't want to screw it up.

That's not something we can tell you how to make.. that's like asking someone how do I chisel a beautiful statue.. you have to have both an artistic eye and a good 3rd eye to visualize how all the piece will look after you remove metal in the places you want to expose.

My best advice is google Medeco cutaway images to get an idea of what they normally look like and what others have done, and then take the lock apart and measure everything, then start marking parts that need to get removed to expose other parts and then debur and sand everything and reassemble the housing, plug, pins, sidebar, and springs and that's it.

Mitch.Capper, a member here once made a really nice Medeco cutaway, he documented the process very well. If you can't follow this, then no advice here will help: http://mitchcapper.com/general/18-medec ... y-cutaway/



The rest of the eye candy: http://mitchcapper.com/gallery/folder/M ... %20Mortise

Squelchtone

[south town ninja]

thanks squelch,i did see that, and i don't think i can follow it. It seems a fair bit harder than a regular cutaway. I may just have to purchase one. I think i might spend more on mess ups than on a remade cutaway. Then again, i do have one extra, maybe i'll give it a shot. Thanks for the link.

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

I cant tell you how to do it but just share how i approach the problem.

Accurately model the lock you want to cut in CAD and then try out the cuts you wanna make and check it looks good and the lock still works without parts falling out of it.

If it it doesn't work out try another design. its easy to check it all out before you make the first real cut.

[south town ninja]

I have never used CAD before. I think thats beyond my skill set quite a bit. I'm not completely inept at computers, but they definitely aren't my strong suit. is it pretty easy to use?

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

Well i learnt it fairly quickly but i had some experience with graphics packages before hand. You can use simple things like google sketch up or theres and even better one thats completely free.

Its called Onshape and its from the same guys that made Solidworks but its Cloud based... give it a go and see how you get on maybe?

Theres a basic formulae that Higher security locks follow for cutaways and most of them involve a bunch of slots.. its like looking through a set of prison bars while looking at the inner workings. Theres some ways you can get creative while still retaining full functionality.

I'll start a post with some of my cutaways in. I have threads on a couple of other forums but maybe some of the guys here haven't seen them yet.