@@mail4billgo check into full fledge casting. You’ll be able to use hotter and stronger steel for a long lasting key. That is a very soft metal and would likely break on anything that’s not a very smooth operating lock.
@@zachlindsey3715 Yep. This product is for a more or less disposable 1 use key. You get a hold of the legitimate key for a few seconds to make the cast then use the cast key to slip in.
As a professional patternmaker, I'm in awe. Metal casting usually is messy, dirty, heavy, loud and large. This is pretty, like a toy steam engine. I love it, the technology is so cool. ❤
@moroteseoinage There are lots of metal casting, moulding, and patternmaking videos out there. I don't think I would greatly contribute. I'd just increase the number.
@@erintyres3609 Wood's is indeed the bomb. It has saved my butt on more that one occasion where I stripped something out and needed to get it working just long enough to get it properly fixed. Everybody should have some in their toolbox.
"Well, we're gonna sit right here until you inject every bit of that, Mister. That's what your grandpa did to me when he caught me smoking and I never smoked again"
I feel like it kinda missed the mark. You can't "quickly" get an impression of a key, without completely disassembling the kit. I feel like a "Covert" kit would have quick and easy access to the impression clay and press, without needing to disassemble all of it. The rest of the kit would be best separate from the impression insert, so you can covertly get the impression, then retreat to your kit to make the copy.
@@xmikemurphyx Define "quickly" to you. Doesn't mean it's the same for everyone. If you were trying to make a key like this, you'd be prepared to do so -- if you wanted it "quickly". Otherwise, it's a few minutes.
I teach a course in User Experience Design and want to let you know that your discussion referencing user testing is much appreciated and I will be sharing this with my students as an excellent example of product development. Many thanks to you, LPL and Bosnianbill for sharing your knowledge all these years!
@@ViktorRzh LPL answered my "Why so many threads?" question less than a minute from when it popped into my head. It's a design decision that seems to make the UX worse, but was actually done to solve a problem testing identified.
@@ViktorRzh my instruction is focused to provide guidance to students exploring career paths in digital technology. I present a learning chunk/module to introduce concepts and strategies of design for accessibility (think wcag... ) and another for physical design with ergonomics in mind... but in the end it all comes down to validation through testing - and LPL did a fine job of expressing the user-development testing phase.
@@wayne00k chatgpt, write a short mocking poem regarding incompetence original promt and autors of given promt. P.S. 3.5? Really? I can detect this style while being half asleeep.
the housing, spoon, lighter, and clay are each under $1. With a 3D printer, I have everything I need lying around... except the ingots. The low-melting-point metal can be obtained online for under $10 (or much less if you are hard-core DIY) After taxes, delivery, and currency conversion the kit is $150. I'm ordering some ingots...
Man oh man, I wish I had one of these when I was an Apartment Complex manager. It would have been so useful when a tenant needed a key and the only one I had in the office was already the backup.
Many tenants would have broken them off in locks, despite warnings that they are much weaker than normal keys. Then you'd have a much bigger issue on your hands,
my apartment complex removed the key deadbolt locks,replaced them with Doormakaba electronic deadbolt locks. you use a RFID tag as a key,or an app on your smartphone,Bluetooth. the lock connects to the office via your WiFi,so they can lock you out any time they want,they log or track entries,i'm not sure if that's just the phone app or both. the maintenance guys have the app on their company phones. On Jan 1,I got locked out because the batteries died,they reached the end of their 2 year life. But at least it can't be picked or bump-keyed.
@@JayWye52 Locks making use of RFID readers tend to have their own weaknesses and LPL has shown a few of them in videos over the years, though of course it depends on the particular lock as to which ones if any are applicable. Many electronic locks in general are vulnerable to magnets however so that'd be a place most criminals looking to break into one would probably start. That said, they do have the benefit of keeping out more "traditional" crooks, simply because most wouldn't bother looking up info on a specific lock to find its weaknesses, so if they were going for a non-destructive approach, there's a chance they'd just look elsewhere. Of course, most criminals just go the destructive route anyhow, since it's easier and they care more about speed than anything else.
Awesome tool. It should be noted that someone can make the impression of the key, then make the casting at a later time if so needed. I think that's what makes it fit into the "even if you only have access to the key for a few seconds" part. Pre-staging the mold and just throwing the key in, clamping it, then taking the key back could take just 10 or 20 seconds, then you can go along and make the casting at a later time.
Only if you've already separated the impression part from the rest of the kit, which requires entire disassembly. It's packed well for travel, but not for covert key copying.
@@xmikemurphyxyou think you would ever be copying a key with zero premeditation? If you're trying to get the impression the only thing you need in your pocket is the clamshell with the clay in it already. It's smaller, nobody would notice it and you get your mold done in 2s if you have reasonable grip strength. Why would you even consider taking the kit apart and putting back together 3 times part of that task
What is a non-criminal reason why anyone needs to copy a key they only have access to for a few seconds? This channel talks about "locksport," locks as puzzles, and about security/evaluating locks, and some of what LPL sells could conceivably be used that way. But I'm curious if anyone can think of a scenario where this kit is useful for something non-felonious.
It's useful for Red Team physical penetration testing of secure facilities. Like what DeviantOllam is engaged in legally. Or if you really need to give a copy of a key to someone in an emergency and you have neither a spare nor the time to go to a locksmith.
It should be noted to hold the lighter vertical and not tilted. That will stop the lighter from heating the safety strip and the flint wheel up. Lighters are only made to light for a few seconds. If heated in the wrong orientation it will weaken the plastic that retains the flint wheel and it will/can shoot out. Best case scenario. Worst case is you will burn your thumb. If you do burn your thumb, pinch your earlobe. Cough cough trust me. I've burnt my thumb a few times. 😉 I love this channel!
You can really tell when a product is designed by someone that knows exactly what it would be used for and what exactly it needs, beautiful product mr. LPL, congrats on this one!
@@mcblaggart8565 It's only just managing to reach melting point, it'll require a lot more energy to reach boiling point (1700°C) and release significant amounts of vapour. A mini lighter is going to run out of fuel well before then (and probably burn your fingers). Sure, it'll emit *some* before then, but you'll breathe worse just crossing the road.
@@mcblaggart8565 Pretty sure there are plenty warnings about fumes in the instructions :P Immediately found it reading their shop page at least. Aand checked their instruction manual, there's a red warning text about it in the point where you start melting the metal.
You're going to, single-handedly (of course along with the team of people who made this product), change the lock industry. I'm buying this. It's so cool!
@@DeanWhiteUrbanPrintzSunderland Not quite. Wood's Metal melts at 156F. *Close* to body temperature, in the context of metal melting points, but you won't have to worry about it melting in your hand like Gallium will.
@@coredumperror Wood's Metal is toxic isn't it? I'm sure it has Cadmium in it (as well as lead). But yes, it is a stronger and has a higher melt point.
While impressioning is a very effective attack when it's applicable, it's not the sort of thing the average person needs to worry about. It's an attack that's mostly used to get extended access to an area the attacker already has some limited access to in the first place. It's much more of a problem for corporate espionage than it is for securing your motorcycle, or whatever.
@@faithgrins It's one of the reasons why it's a terrible idea to give your keys to a vallet parking service. Most people have the car key on the same keychain they use for their house key.
One of the British SOE gadgets (of WW2) was a tin plate box the size of two plain (no filter!) cigarettes. This contained two matches, some woods metal, some plasticine (modelling material of the '40s), some talc and a paper clip. The whole outfit was as big as a Bic lighter! The paper clip was to fold into tweezers to hold the tin lid while the metal melted over the match flame, then you pushed the paper clip into the woods metal in the mould to make a handle for the newly made key.
@@nathanmiller9381 unlikely, most of the SOE stuff wasn't even branded by the manufacturer (e.g. the Wellrod-pistol was made by BSA, but had no markings) ... very cool stuff though.
The video began to play while i was out of the room getting a snack and a soda...... imagine my bewilderment upon returning at 3:49 as LPL says "....remove the retention band and our lighter and spoon come off..." followed by him unscrewing the end of something and showing a white powder. I guess in my confusion i missed him saying baby powder but upon restarting the video things began to make sense. You got me LPL. lol
@@Throckmorton.Scribblemonger 8600 sq ft. excluding the bonus room in the attic.. lol joking i live in an apartment. lol I have ADHD tho Notice i said it began while i was out of the room. What i was watching wasn't very good so i was not in a rush and just left it playing, I got side tracked before finally getting the snack and returning. adding to my confusion was the fact i did not even know this video was next. I knew that voice was the LPL but what my mind was thinking was on the screen certainly was not. lol
@@jayme3181 Mould maker (aka pattern maker) is a profession too. Back when the automotive industry was in its infancy the race to cast single-piece V8 blocks, with acceptable yields, was all the rage. Casting a block with that many water and oil passages, that weren't vertical, was a major challenge. What was learned from this, once they succeeded, led to so many advances in other consumer goods that it's hard to imagine today. Trivial as it sounds, the perfecting art of pouring molten metal into tamped sand has been as instrumental to the technological revolution as the precision lathe and the micrometer.
@@andersjjensen Hi Anders, thanks for sharing this interesting story. I was not saying caster was not a job which required talent or one in which you could not become extremely skilled - but that to me, 'profession' is associated with a job in which you 'profess'. I.e. that the thing you are selling is your knowledge or opinion, such as a lawyer or teacher. Nowadays people claim to be a professional anything (footballer for example) but to me these are jobs - not anything to be ashamed of, of course. A master craftsman has rare and refined talent. But it's not a profession or vocation, these words had meanings which still apply for me at least 😀
It is really cool. I got my second one to work fine, the first was a learning experience on the amount of pressure to use compressing the mold. Very nice.
I just finished watching Adam Savage building a lock and mentioning you, and here you are with a fresh 11-min-old video building a key, gotta love the universe sometimes! :)
@@dudebroguymate Seriously. I had stopped watching them regularly a while ago, but I unsubbed and haven't watched a single video after they did a shit review and then sold the prototype without permission for that specialty GPU cooler. Proved conclusively that they don't care about actual technical accuracy and only go for memes.
Third, Wood's Metal contains some significantly toxic components, such as lead and cadmium. In the conditions they are being handled there, it should be safe but, just to be sure, do not breathe in any vapors when heating, and wash your hands well after handling the key. VERY cool device! 😀
Field's metal has no lead or cadmium, a slightly lower melting point, and a significantly higher price tag because it's main constituent is indium. The jury is still out on breathing indium vapor, though.
I have a few hundred pounds of something I was told is woods metal. It was used to make moulds for taking x rays. I should take a chunk to a scrapyard and see if they have one of those laser guns that can tell me exactly what it's made from.
@@Swishersweetcigarilo Cerrobend™and Bendalloy™ are brand names, they are Wood's metal. It is used for making custom shaped apertures in radiation treatment, maybe that's what they meant when they said x-rays. Any markings on the metal or the container it's in?
@@quokka_11 no markings. My neighbor scrapped a hospital after it closed down. Lots of different shaped chunks with a little bit of Styrofoam beads stuck to the surface. He melted a fair amount into hockey pucks. I think he said he wanted to cast them into bullets for an antique rifle before he realized it wasn't lead and was a lot more valuable. He kept it around for a rainy day fund but I would think that it would be hard to find a buyer for so much on the secondary market.
The only difference is that Q Branch would issue 007 with hyperspecial Unobtanium ingots that cost a significant fraction of the cost of a torpedo boat that melt flawlessly in ten seconds, stay flawlessly molten for fifteen seconds after heat is removed, and harden to approximately the strength of rolled homogenous armor plate in another ten.
When I was a kid, there was a series of books focusing on a young man named "Tom Swift" (apparently there's been many Tom Swifts, this set came out in the '90s). In one of the books he had a little gizmo that could "take a picture" inside of a lock and then make a key out of what it "saw" inside. This is just about the closest thing to that I've ever seen, and I gotta say it's darn cool.
LPL did a video on something that does pretty much exactly what you're describing, with a camera inserted into a keyhole. It's video 1209 on his channel
It would be straightforward to do that with a picture of the key; visual examination of the inside of a lock sounds harder to automate. But LPL did have a video where he showed a camera that would go inside a keyway.
There are puns called Tom Swifties named after the book series. The author didn't like using the phrase "said Tom", so he used other words e. g. "remarked Tom"
I don't think I'd ever want to cast a key copy, but damn, that is some SWEET UX and product design. Product manufacturers can learn so much from all the small details on this.
They should consider using Rose's Metal. Both Wood's Metal and Rose's Metal contain lead, but Rose's Metal contains NO cadmium which is the much more hazardous metal. Rose's metal melts at 205°F instead of 158°F, but that should still be pretty easy using a butane lighter. They're about the same price and Rose's Metal, while not that strong, is a fair bit stronger than Wood's Mental so the keys would last a little longer.
Ive 3d printed almost the exact same clamshell and used non-air dry clay before. I then used low melt aluminum (usually) to cast. Same exact method here. However having everything in one convenient package is amazing.
I’ve used something similar for decades, sometimes if you don’t get the mold perfectly flat you can still get the key to work by juggling it. But I always used a utility knife to shave excess clay off of the mold. I found the higher the melting point, the stronger the key. And I discovered several other little tricks over the years as well.
And not too far in the future, a Raspberry Pi board that attaches nicely to the back of it all and allows you to copy and program the chips to go along with the keys that need them!
More than anything I love the engineering of the kit, it's so well thought out. It's elegantly functional! I don't know when I would ever use it but I want one. 😅
Good kit. I appreciate that you chose an alloy that is hard enough at room temperature, and easy enough to melt with a relatively cool heat source. While the combination of parts is nothing new, the packaging is.
The Chinese shipping people are very, very good to pack things tightly. When our factory first started to get deliveries from our Chinese company, a whole shipment 20-foot container was packed very tightly, BUT they mixed everything, so to fit in as tightly as possible, it took our receiving dept 2 whole days to sort the shipment out. A couple of more was on the way. But we stopped this asap. After that, we've had less density in the containers, but they were offloaded in minutes instead of days.
oh hey, i had a little metal casting setup kind of like this as a kid. not for keys, but for little metal trinkets. think i mostly made alternative monopoly pieces... an obvious improvement would be for the stand, it looks very easy to accidentally tip over when you're pouring the metal. so maybe include something to help brace it, fold out kickstands or an impression in the other portion of the case that you can slot the casting stand in while its laying flat to act as a bigger footprint.
Very clever. I used to do casting in bronze and silver, and I can testify that molton metal is hot. At my student dorm, in the laundry room were we had 440 volts, I once poured silver into a plaster mold that wasn't completely dry. It exploded, sending droplets and streams of hot metal across the top of the washing machine and onto the floor. I was barefoot (silly me) and had to do quite a fancy dance. Fun to think about later but rather scary at the time.
as a kid I used to melt lead wheelweights on the kitchen gas stove,then cast little lead ingots. I put a wet miscast ingot back into my little lead pot,and it exploded lead over the burner,clogging it. the end of that hobby. Luckily,I was not harmed. Lesson learned.
This is great stuff, and,... obviously, you are a master of your craft. In 67 yrs, only had lock/ key issues a few times. From what It looks like, one would have to carry a large suitcase full of " equipment" , to be prepared for any daily lock, or , James Bond issues. I just wonder how many people have become fairly good at this, and have a garage/ room full of stuff that was enthusiastically ordered, that the wife just rolls her eyes at.
Thanks LPL! My boss will never see it coming now! No cameras in lots of areas because you have to get the keys from the owner! I'm finally going to take this place down, and I never could have done it without your product and instructions! This is life changing, thanks so much!
Don’t admit a premeditated crime on the internet. Even if it is a joke if you ever get investigated this comment could come back to bite you. Just delete this comment as your not legal advice lawyer.
I am a longtime fan of the lock, picking lawyer, and I have appreciated his mission of getting lock manufacturers to improve their wears. However, this device seems to straight up, be targeted towards thieves. I can think of very few situations why and honest person would need such a device that works so quickly and inobtrusively. Another thing to keep in mind… Woods metal is 25% lead. It is toxic to inhale its fumes.
Yeah, I mean the shop is literally called covert instruments. I already got strange wibes from one his multi lock picking tools that gets into cars as well. The wording in the video as well.. “only having access to the original (key) for a few seconds”
Even if you think that this is targeted just to thieves, then it still serves a purpose to show how easy making a copy can be. Just think that someone can make a copy of your key and enter in quick, quiet manner - enter in a way that would not draw suspicion in broad daylight. This is still a lesson.
@@tarps2 Why did you get strange vibes from a tool for getting into cars? It takes less than a second to break through a car window, and thieves do it in broad daylight (called "bipping" now, I believe). If a thief goes out of their way to acquire special tools and skills to steal from cars without damaging them, that's honestly preferable.
@@mk_rexx _golf clap_ edit: I originally made that bold instead of italics and my brain immediately went "omg you can't use that tone at the club".. what is wrong with me?
TBH. this is among the least impressive (and most accessible) of trick seen on this channel. All you need is low temperature alloy used for "melt out core mandrels" making hollow carbon fiber object (where dimensions of internal void matter). And some "moon sand" or similar silicone based play doo for making the mold.
There was an episode of "Leverage" that Parker was dressed as a nun and went into a bank vault with a clay container similar to this and made a copy of the master vault key with super glue. I always wondered how far-fetched that idea was. What an awesome product! I can see this being a hit!
@@_yreg eh, I don't see how you can protect against key duplication without fundamentally changing the definition of "key", so I don't really see what the problem is
Can't do much with modern car besides open the door and set the alarm off. The car won't start, but you could steal stuff later without breaking a window.
For anyone wondering, lpl did a video with the modern rogue about this like 2 years ago. "Early lpl key casting lore" and he explains a lot more in the process like how he uses a silicon ice cube mold to melt a large woods metal ingot into it
@@heatshield If you already have the key legitimately, why would you need to make another one? If you need a spare, you'd just take it to a professional key-cutter rather than make your own vastly inferior version.
![[1591] The Replicant: Pocket Key Casting Perfected!](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
