Re: medeco madness
ARF-GEF wrote:Thank you again Squelchtone!
This is one of the best threads I've read lately!
That one picture really tells a lot about biaxials.
I'm a bit ashamed to ask another question, I'm sorry if you find it cumbersome. This is just a brand I know (or thanks to you used to know) near to nothing.
So the question is A.) how are the rings protecting against decoding?
B.) Why don't they protect against picking? Don't they function as a really deep serration?
The Lock Technologies decoder in the 70s used a Medeco key blank milled down to a thin spine, then holes drilled in it so it is a guide to position very thin wires under each pin stack. The wires were wiggled until they could be fed up through the sidebar groove on each pin until you felt it hit the top pin. Then you could measure how far the wire went up to decode that pin stack. Those rings would frequently snag the wires so they would stop at the ring and not make it all the way to the top of the pin, giving a false reading.
It was because of the fact that the decoder used a Medeco key blank as an integral part of their tool, that allowed Medeco to sue them and force them to stop production of the tool, since at that time that keyway/blank was still patent protected. All except perhaps a half dozen of those Medeco decoders were tracked down and bought back from the customers at the time of the lawsuit. If you can get your hands on one it would be quite a collector's item, within these circles.