Make Sure to Scroll Down on Each Page to View All Content!

3d Printed Locks

Personally I think that locks are a pretty intresting object for being so commonplace. There is a lot to the internal mechanisms of locks that I find quite fascinating, so I decided to make one myself.

Slider Lock

This is a design of a "shutter" lock in which when the cylinder is turned, a sliding bar is released to disconnect from the lock. In general this design is very conventional for most locks.

Radial Lockbox

This design uses a set of pins extending from the key to both set the lock pins, but also actuate the cylinder. The benefit of this design is that it is trickier to tension the cylinder while the lock is being manipulated, but the negative is that the pins are easily indexed.

Reflections

These projects were a fun way to play around with the internal mechanisms of locks, and I learned a lot both about locks and about designing for printers. A major issue I kept running into was I had set tolerances way too tight which then led to a lot of time wasted removing excess material. Also, I learned to temper my expectations for the strength of some components as can be seen from the substitution of metal for some pieces during assembly.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse