Norman Lock cylinder

Maurice Onraet · 2009-06-09T11:50:28+00:00

Hello Fellow Lock Collectors, Does anyone have the Patent Number of the Norman Lock Cylinder? Thanks, Maurice

Dean Nickel

He did design a hard lock to pick. I still can’t say I have done it.

mhmh

Picking should really be difficult. Some decoding techniques come to mind, however. Go between disks and feel for balls, or make a pin and cam style setup key.
With the little market share of these locks, likely nobody made such tools.

Dean Nickel

Add to the fact that no keys were every uncut from the factory and none from after market sources. So all keys will have to be made.

Billy B Edwards Jr. CML

Dean Nickel wrote
Add to the fact that no keys were every uncut from the factory and none from after market sources. So all keys will have to be made.

Well, a few of the key blanks did make it out of his factory. Yes, I have 3. Here is a front and back shot.
BBE.

[unknown]

Dean Nickel

Ok…. I am really wanting those right now. I do thank you for the pictures now with the broken keys I have I can maybe make some keys maybe. I knew the tips were broken but the locks still work. You can pull the keys out upside down with the tip broken. Another Locksmith did that and handed me the lock like he had picked it. Good joke really.

mhmh

BBE wrote
Norman was a very interesting and intelligent guy who passed on a few years ago.

One never knows which online source is trustworthy, but I just found this by accident: http://www.obitsforlife.com/obituary/1038352/Epstein-Norman.php
It indicates that he passed away just weeks ago, Jan 23, 2015.

A great inventor indeed.

[unknown]

Billy B Edwards Jr. CML

mhmh wrote
One never knows which online source is trustworthy, but I just found this by accident: http://www.obitsforlife.com/obituary/1038352/Epstein-Norman.php
It indicates that he passed away just weeks ago, Jan 23, 2015.

A great inventor indeed.

Looks real, a lot of us in the industry had bad info didn’t we!
BBE.

[unknown]

Dean Nickel

Norman Epstein died at home in Kent on January 23rd 2015,
the 23rd anniversary of his mother’s death,at age 83.
He had suffered a variety of illnesses in recent years.
He was born in Brooklyn September 22nd 1931 to Louis and
Rose (Silverman) Epstein.When he was a child the family bought
the land surrounding the intersection usually shown on maps
as “Mead’s Corners”,though the Epstein family has now owned
the land (which they have named “Twin Brooks”) longer than
the Meads,the Foshays who preceded them,or the Reddings after
them.He moved there permanently in 1961 with his wife Turid,
to whom he was married from 1957 to her death in 2011.
He was a graduate of Tilden High School in Brooklyn and was
in the Army from 1952 to 1954,serving at Fort Dix.For some
years he worked for his family’s chemical business in Brooklyn
and New Jersey before selling his shares to his brothers.
He was a mechanical genius who was awarded patents on various
locking devices,a tube sheet plug for heat exchanges,and
surgical replacement joints.Other projects never realized
included a fly-tying vise and a rotary engine with 70% thermal
efficiency.He was a longtime amateur magician and a former
competitive skiier and bicycle racer.For years he was a
private pilot of single-engine airplanes.His hobbies included
music,photography,and international cooking.He met his
Norwegian wife in Paris when lighting a stage production
(a talent he had first honed in Brooklyn) and they married
in London.
He was a founding member and second president of the Kent
Volunteer Fire Department,and for years managed the family
rental apartments at Twin Brooks,employing the same skills
he used to build and design his own home there.Built as a
summer colony by his father,he converted the bungalows to
year-round rentals in the 1960s.He was active in various
local political,environmental,and recycling groups.
He is survived by his son Louis of Twin Brooks,Kent,and a
brother Edward of New Jersey and Florida.A daughter died
in infancy in 1959.
Balsamo-Cordovano Funeral Home (225-2144) will conduct
graveside services at 1 PM Friday,January 30th,at
King David Memorial Gardens,Rose Hills Cemetery,Peekskill
Hollow Road & Mill Street in Putnam Valley.

mhmh

I got one lock and one key from Dean, managed to make a nice cutaway, but then 🙁blush): I broke the one key… The key seems to be worn down a bit - nowhere near a “tight-fitting curve” as mentioned here: http://goo.gl/Qudem1
Basically, the key doesn’t align the balls very well and a lot of jiggling and force was required to turn the lock.

So I want to make a new one.
Looks like it’s about time to learn some CAD and try a 3D metal printer like http://www.shapeways.com/
I’m curious how many iterations this will take…

Attached is a rendering of the current version, designed in OpenSCAD. At this stage, it’s a blank only, but OpenSCAD should also allow for a computer-generated bitting.

Cheers
mh

Dean Nickel

IF you get this working I would LOVE to know!🙁nod):

My keys are no better I am sorry to say.

mhmh

Didn’t get this working yet, but making some progress…

After about 3 weeks of Shapeways processing and shipping time, the first batch arrived.
I had them make two blanks and two cut keys, from different materials each, see 1st attached picture:
The keys are arranged like this:
1 2
….. 3
4 5

1: A cut key from “White Strong & Flexible” (3D printed plastic material: https://www.shapeways.com/materials/strong-and-flexible-plastic )
2: A cut key from “Polished Bronze Steel” (3D printed stainless steel powder, then bronze infused: https://www.shapeways.com/materials/steel )
3: the original - broken - Norman key
4: A blank from “Frosted Ultra Detail” (3D printed acrylic plastic: https://www.shapeways.com/materials/frosted-detail-plastic )
5: A blank from “Polished Metallic Plastic” (“Alumide”, 3D printed nylon plastic with aluminum dust: https://www.shapeways.com/materials/metallic-plastic )

Out of these 5 materials, only 4 (“frosted ultra detail”) fits through the Norman lock front profile cap, as designed and printed. The other two plastic materials needed force to push through the profile cap, so that some extra plastic material was cut away. The steel key material doesn’t allow for that obviously, and needs some manual modification -> looks like I have to make the CAD design of the blank a bit thinner / one of the warding grooves a bit wider.

Also, my computer-generated CAD bitting isn’t working yet, either: See the 2nd and 3rd of the attached pictures.
The 2nd picture shows the old original Norman key in the disk stack; an allen key goes through the holes where the balls should align, so that this disk stack is perfectly aligned. You can see that this old original key doesn’t guide the disks properly - that’s why not all of the balls are aligned with that key.
The 3rd picture shows my bitting on the “Polished Bronze Steel” 3D printed key: Neither does this new key guide the disks properly - it’s not yet “tight-fitting” - nor is the allen key parallel to the central axis -> my assumptions about the bitting were a bit off.

But in general, this looks quite promising to me, and definitely it’s very interesting to experiment with CAD design and this 3D printing stuff.

Dean Nickel

You have something closer that anyone else so far… other than BBE. Being he has uncut blanks I wonder if a scan would help….

mhmh

A high resolution scan would certainly help; for now I printed the photographs and used that to make assumptions about the tips of the keys.
Also, a cut key next to a blank would help to understand how the cuts in the area close to the tip were designed.

mhmh

This is the 2nd attempt, I ordered it in the “Frosted Ultra Detail” material only, so I hope Shapeways will make this a bit faster.

Billy B Edwards Jr. CML

mhmh wrote
A high resolution scan would certainly help; for now I printed the photographs and used that to make assumptions about the tips of the keys.
Also, a cut key next to a blank would help to understand how the cuts in the area close to the tip were designed.

Sorry for the delay. I a trying to attach a PDF of the blanks next to a cut key, both sides. Since it is a PDF you can enlarge the images without loosing quality. Hope that helps.
BBE.

[unknown]

mhmh

Thank you very much, BBE!

This helps a lot, because at the scanner glass level, all the dimensions match exactly.

If you look closely at the two marked areas in the attached picture, there seem to exist small differences between the left blank and the right key.

Cheers
mh

Billy B Edwards Jr. CML

mhmh wrote
Thank you very much, BBE!

This helps a lot, because at the scanner glass level, all the dimensions match exactly.

If you look closely at the two marked areas in the attached picture, there seem to exist small differences between the left blank and the right key.

Cheers
mh

Yes, all of my blanks show that difference.

I seems that all of the cut keys have been flattened a little on the one side and ground a little on the round side. Isn’t the front of the plug sintered? Maybe he just didn’t want to remake the zinc die for the keys.
BBE.

[unknown]

mhmh

This time I got the bitting right.
To make the key work smoothly however required a lot of hand filing.
Not sure if this was due to the fact that I ordered “unpolished” plain stainless steel from Shapeways this time. The “polished” bronze steel I ordered previously needed nearly no hand filing in comparison.
I guess the Shapeways process is not ideal for precision parts in the first place - but then again, where else would you get such single part made for 20$.

Cheers
mh

kwoswalt99

Why wasn’t this lock commercially successful?
Thanks

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