engineering detail drawing for picks ?

[Shrub]

Yes youve found the prime reason for doing it, if someone else was making them for you,

But surley thats what commercial picks are

I will knock some up for you all this week,

[jamesphilhulk2]

my brother is an engineer and he works on lasers if you can draw them to scale and pm them to me i will try my D A M N D hardest to get them cut out

[wsbpress]

I am also in the process of getting some tools made. I know a guy with a laser cutter. The only thing holding me back now is time. Because I don't want to keep bothering the guy, I want to have several designs ready to put on one sheet to cut. I'm thinking some Falle deep reach hooks, maybe the Falle fixed tension wrenches, comb picks, and (what I'm really looking forward to) some foil-impressioning tools. The software he uses for his machine uses .dwg files (Autocad I think) but I use Solidworks so I'll just export a drawing to .dwg. Anyone have any ideas of other things that might be cool to have laser-cut? I'm not a big fan of rakes so I don't think I'll cut any.

[Santos718]

.dwg just means that it is a drawing.

[SFGOON]

There's a website mentioned on this board somewhere that will take any CAD drawing over the internet and deliver the finished project in 2 weeks. Also, I have this CRAZY uncle with a full precision machine shop (he makes airplane parts and does some gunsmithing on the side) and making picks would be a few extra bucks in his pocket. Let me talk to him and se if I can't convince him to get into the pick fabrication buisness....

[Chrispy]

.dwg just means that it is a drawing.

I thought it was Santos slang for dog. As in, "What is up dawg?"

[Shrub]

Just a tip, a machine that uses an art package to produce the items takes the code from the drawings make up,

What i mean by this is that if you have a drawing on screen, the machine probably will not produce it correctly,

What you need to do is draw the item in the way you want it cut, taking backlash etc in to it,

To make a square you would draw it from one corner and go all the way around the edge, you wouldnt put 2 opposite lines in and then do the other 2, that wouldnt cut right.

Laser isnt the way to go either but if you can get a good result then go for it.

[jamesphilhulk2]

@SFGOON could you post that website

@shrub yeah i think it ruins the temper of the metal

[SFGOON]

I don't know. I remember it was in General chatter if that helps...

[wsbpress]

Laser-cutting ruins the temper of the metal? Is this correct? If so is it possible to re-temper the metal after it has been cut (heating it in oil or water or something?).

[SFGOON]

Yes, steel can be re-tempered a few times, if I'm not mistaken.

[wsbpress]

I am going to try laser-cutting some stuff, if it works great, if not back to the dremel. I may re-temper some tools and compare them with the non-re-tempered ones.
The laser-cutting thing is not really necessary but I thought it might be cool to be able to produce a bunch of good tools to give/sell to friends and people who want to get started in lockpicking. Many people get interested but lose interest when they have to spend $20-30 + shipping and they really only need a half-hook and a tension wrench (personally I tend to drop way more $ for tools I may hardly ever use, but I'm already hooked). I would like to be able to sell a small kit to someone for $5 or so, and since I'm cutting the tools why not have that kit contain some Falle-type tools.

[jamesphilhulk2]

if you do manage to cut them out will post some pictures of them

[wsbpress]

Yea no problem. I'm also going to try and borrow a video camera to record the tools being cut on the machine. It looks really neat when its in action.

[jamesphilhulk2]

thanks i'm soooo looking forward to that post