mechanical combo lock just decided not to open

[QuangTri]

Tech is supposed to come today, should be interesting. The Big Red failure videos were interesting.
Both S&G locks failed with the second wheel slipping.

Funny, seem to occasionally see really old safes with mech tumblers that still work. Used government safes for years and never knew of a lock failure. Those locks sure seemed a lot more robust that what they put on consumer safes.

Guess you have to be in the specialty to understand how such a mechanism can change for timeless to unreliable.

The lock on my old AmSec safe felt higher quality, and my Sentry combo safe in Hawaii is sloppy but good after twenty years.

 

[QuangTri]

Tech came out and found the lock had slipped one of the wheels. Why?
On a less than one year old safe with probably less than a couple dozen unlockings?

Liberty just sent the same model lock and it was set to the original combo.
Wife is ambivalent about going to an electronic lock, though she is coping with the dialing for now.

Dunno how long it will take me to trust this thing now.

 

[BigNate]

I bought 3 of the exact same safe, when the battery dies in one, I can swap the keypad from one to another and open the safe.

I had one where the keypad went out, and having them be the same allowed me to open the safe while I awaited a replacement keypad.

OK - this worries me... if you can switch keypads between "identical safes" and about 90% of the electronic keypad safes that I see out there have some variant of the "SG" keypad - so does that mean that if one were to go buy a safe with one of those keypads, set the combination, then yank the keypad off of that safe and take it out as a "key" to let themselves in to any other safe with the same keypad - they could? I had always assumed that the keypad passed a numerically / mathematically unique code back to a protected actuator (the code was unique to that safe and that keypad) - and that the keypad only would send that code when the proper pin was provided...

If you can buy "3 identical safes" and swap keypads to get in if one of the batteries dies - that would imply that the unlatch mechanism is actually part of the keypad module - or that a "protected" unlatch mechanism would open when the keypad says "open" (or any common simple signal like power on a wire). Am I reading that wrong? If that is the case I'm a bit freaked out by it.

 

[XJThrottle]

On mine, the connector to the keypad inside the door. You'd be splicing wires to make it work.

 

[cool arrow]

I don't know exactly what your post was trying to get at, but yes, I have swapped keypads when one crapped out.

 

[rockbronco]

I bought 3 of the exact same safe, when the battery dies in one, I can swap the keypad from one to another and open the safe.

I had one where the keypad went out, and having them be the same allowed me to open the safe while I awaited a replacement keypad.

OK - this worries me... if you can switch keypads between "identical safes" and about 90% of the electronic keypad safes that I see out there have some variant of the "SG" keypad - so does that mean that if one were to go buy a safe with one of those keypads, set the combination, then yank the keypad off of that safe and take it out as a "key" to let themselves in to any other safe with the same keypad - they could? I had always assumed that the keypad passed a numerically / mathematically unique code back to a protected actuator (the code was unique to that safe and that keypad) - and that the keypad only would send that code when the proper pin was provided...

If you can buy "3 identical safes" and swap keypads to get in if one of the batteries dies - that would imply that the unlatch mechanism is actually part of the keypad module - or that a "protected" unlatch mechanism would open when the keypad says "open" (or any common simple signal like power on a wire). Am I reading that wrong? If that is the case I'm a bit freaked out by it.

I swapped a failed keypad on a family members safe(safe was locked at the time) but we still needed the original code to open once plugged in so in that particular case the code has to have been stored in the internal actuator assembly and not the keypad itself.

 

[BigNate]

I bought 3 of the exact same safe, when the battery dies in one, I can swap the keypad from one to another and open the safe.

I had one where the keypad went out, and having them be the same allowed me to open the safe while I awaited a replacement keypad.

OK - this worries me... if you can switch keypads between "identical safes" and about 90% of the electronic keypad safes that I see out there have some variant of the "SG" keypad - so does that mean that if one were to go buy a safe with one of those keypads, set the combination, then yank the keypad off of that safe and take it out as a "key" to let themselves in to any other safe with the same keypad - they could? I had always assumed that the keypad passed a numerically / mathematically unique code back to a protected actuator (the code was unique to that safe and that keypad) - and that the keypad only would send that code when the proper pin was provided...

If you can buy "3 identical safes" and swap keypads to get in if one of the batteries dies - that would imply that the unlatch mechanism is actually part of the keypad module - or that a "protected" unlatch mechanism would open when the keypad says "open" (or any common simple signal like power on a wire). Am I reading that wrong? If that is the case I'm a bit freaked out by it.

I swapped a failed keypad on a family members safe(safe was locked at the time) but we still needed the original code to open once plugged in so in that particular case the code has to have been stored in the internal actuator assembly and not the keypad itself.

OK - this is good to hear... Thanks...