What Makes the Medeco Lock So Hard to Pick?

Feeling safe at home? Or is this another myth that the local security company would like you to believe. An experienced thief can break your regular lock within 60 seconds and you would not even notice it before it is too late. If safety is a must for you (it should be for everyone), then the obvious choice for your door should be the Medeco lock. The company behind the Medeco lock was the first one to invent a patent key that cannot be legally duplicated without the owner’s knowledge and permission.

How does a lock work?

A regular lock is pretty simple to be unlocked when looking at its technical meaning – the proper key when put in will be compatible with the tumblers and thus the door will magically open in front of you. When the key is not the proper one, one or more tumblers would be on a different position and the door will not open – unless an experienced thief can duplicate the sequence in the lock and open the door.

How is the Medeco lock different?

• The Medeco lock has similarities with a regular lock (the tumblers need to be aligned properly) but there are few differences that will keep you safer. Each Medeco tumbler has a sidebar slot milled into its side – only when all sidebar slots are aligned in the needed sequence, the lock rotation will occur. A lockout cannot happen on these locks – they cannot be rotated 180 degrees because of something called “locator tab”.
• There are three angles on a Medeco lock – left, right and center. Those cuts are rotating the tumblers, having them aligned with the sidebar slots and the legs in the cylinder design. Those installments make the Medeco lock different and safer than a regular one.
• In 2005 a big update was installed in the Medeco lock involving a slider. This slider needs to be pushed by the milling on the specific key – the cylinder is guaranteed to remain locked unless the proper key is used.

Professional lock pickers

They hate the Medeco locks for a reason. Opening the Medeco without the proper key is a hassle even for professionals as the key needs to be present. Most of the lock pickers prefer to drill it out, instead of working on it, but the Medeco lock uses a hard place inside for cylinder protection which makes the drill out a mission impossible.