Sweep frequency, electronic pick guns ....
High speed photography shows that pins start to bounce 'wildly' a few milli-seconds after the first strike and that makes it more unlikely that the driven pins will stay together as a 'pack' for very long in order to clear the shear line. Another problem with motor driven electric pick guns is that it takes a finite time for the operating speed to produce a greater than 1G strike on all pins ... at the same time. Well if it is a swinging needle gun then we know that it can never strike all pins at the same time, with the same amount of energy, because the needle describes an arc. The back pins will always get struck harder than those at the front of the lock.
There is also a small matter of resonance inside the lock, due to the mass of the driven pins and the return springs. One manufacturer claims to have addressed this, by electronically controlling the mechanical stimulus to the key pins. You can get the basic Idea at ....
http://www.multipick-service.com/htdocs ... ontrol.php
I don't know off hand if the HPC Flipit gun they use is motor or solenoid driven ?. Maybe someone here knows. Also is it a swinging needle gun ?.
If we assume for a moment that the theory behind the gun is sound, then we need to remember that all locks are different, even of the same brand and model. (Think about the mass of the key pins, which are different lengths). That means that the ideal stimulus frequency will also vary from lock to lock and we would have to resort to sweeping the frequency over a wide enough range, that would encompass the characteristics of all locks of a given type. That in itself is not a problem and this forum could develop an electronic box of tricks that could be made for a few pounds, with all of the facilities that the £1000 commercial model has.
OK the question you are going to ask is why go to all this trouble if a bog standard electric pick gun can open most locks quickly. My question is, ... what about all of the locks that pick guns fail to open at the moment ?.
If there was enough interest in examining this further, a design for a micro-controlled unit could be made available.