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- Jan 1970
I fell sick a few weeks back and was desperate to take out my device because it caused pain. The lock wasn’t available, but I realized I had around twelve similar keys for different cages lying about, so one might work. It did fit, setting me free. This brought both relief and letdown: the locks aren’t particularly robust. It made me question how many distinct key shapes exist for the mechanisms most cages use, which I believe are: These seem to be 3-pin tumbler varieties. Online research shows a standard pin-tumbler lock has roughly ten pin lengths per pin. My guess is our small cage locks have five or six pin lengths. If there are five, that yields 125 combinations. (This number is further limited because you typically don’t place the shortest and longest pins right next to each other; otherwise, the key becomes too prickly.) To test this theory, I measured my lock keys with a micrometer, hoping to find clusters of lengths indicating the specific count of pin sizes. The findings were ambiguous, but it appeared there might be about seven distinct length groups. However, without sharp boundaries between these groups, I suspect the actual lengths blend together in practice. This makes sense because the total range from shortest to longest was 1.34mm, suggesting each nominal pin length is only about 0.2mm apart from its neighbor. If my assumptions hold, this reduces security further; for instance, a pin set at length-4 could potentially be lifted by a key prong of length-5. To boost security, I’ve decided to keep two distinctly different locks/keys and discard the others. So, does anyone know of a physically compatible lock?