Norman Lock cylinder

[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/...exible-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/...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.