Automatic Safe Cracking

Carlos from Carlos’ Contraptions found a safe that is sure to be filled with bars of gold and bags of diamonds. His problem is that the darn thing is locked. There are indications that others have tried to get into the safe unsuccessfully, his plan was to use technology to crack the safe. The snag that he got into is the servo motor selected to turn the tumbler was not quite powerful enough. Next time we see the project there is sure to be a stepper motor in the mix and a bar of gold sitting on top of the machine. 🙂 If you haven’t got your safe cracking fill have a look at the safe cracking project that we featured a number of years ago by some MIT students.

"Of course, there are many ways of achieving this (e.g. cutting holes into its walls, removing the hinges, hiring a locksmith) but I do not want to break the safe, nor I want to hire anyone to do it in my place. Inspired by so many movies, the first thing I tried was to listen to the (nonexistent) clicking of the dial as it turns: it did not work at all. Very quickly, I decided that the appropriate way of doing it (given my set of skills) was to have a machine do it in my place. So, I decided to build a little manipulator that will test all possible combinations of the safe until it opens up. Since this requires precise positioning I thought a servo motor would be the best choice of actuator (and also because I have some other project ideas involving servos)."