Fri Jul 11, 2014 8:58 pm
Re: my new mark IV manifoil
This is a lock I've been craving to own for many years! They often fetch high prices & I've never been able to afford one when opportunities arose.
That finally changed!
The guy from Chubb may well be correct that Manifoil locks made for government/military use are taken from the factory upon manufacture & stored at a secure location to prevent sabotage/alteration that may reduce security of the mechanism, but this should not be taken to mean that this is the case with all Manifoil locks - they are wholesaled to other companies, who fit them to safes that are retailed them to the public.
There is at least one Australian safe manufacturer that offers their top of the line safes with a Kaba-Mas X-09 by default, but you can pay extra to have a Manifoil fitted instead. So these locks are not controlled to the point of being "government only".
It truely is an amazing lock - even better than I imagined - and is extremely well built, with very fine tolerances!
There doesn't seem to be much point in posting pictures of my lock - femurat has already done a great job & in spite of mine being manufactured in 1986 (vs 1962), mine is absolutely identical, except that it looks like his is missing the frontal lead shielding that protects the wheel pack from imaging using xrays & other radiation. His lock has holes in the dial ring to accommodate the clips to affix the shield, but the clips & shield aren't shown. Here are some pictures of the shield :
The radial cutouts are obviously there to hide the gate locations in any X-ray image of the wheel pack, but there are also shallow 'dots' running around the circumference of the shield, about 2mm from the outer edge.
These are not spaced at regular intervals & therefore look deliberate, as opposed to being part of the manufacturing process.
Upon close examination, they line up with the rivets that hold the parts of each wheel together. An image of the placement of these rivets around a wheel could be used to infer the gate's location & these 'dots' in the shield seem to be there to prevent this.
This is just one example of the great level of thought & planning that has clearly gone into the design & manufacture of this lock - there are nuances I could never have noticed just from looking at photographs of the lock.
A video recording is needed to demonstrate them. If and when I have access to a suitable camera, I will make one, unless femurat beats me to it.
Femurat is correct in saying that there is theoretically a way of taking contact points to manipulate the lock, the split cam arrangement just makes it more time consuming.
That said, the contact points are almost impossible to detect by touch. Even when I'm watching the cam & lever nose to see when contact occurs, there is little to no feedback detectable from the dial. I think the only potential way to measure contact points would be by using a microphone & good noise filtering software!
I'd be interested to know if there are any reliable accounts of this lock being successfully manipulated. Is anybody on the forum aware of a credible report of a successful manipulation?
In this link, http://www.safeventures.com/news.php?news_id=16 the writer states that they have seen Mark Bates fail only once when trying to manipulate safe locks in the UK. I cannot help but wonder if this failure was against a Manifoil.
I have recently learned that there is now a Manifoil Mk8. I have seen images of the lock with the case closed & it seems to have the same footprint as the MkIV. Does anybody have any information about this lock & how it differs from the MkIV?
...Mark
That finally changed!
huxleypig wrote: I was talking to a guy from Chubb safes a bit ago and he was telling me how tightly controlled they are. Once they are made they are collected from Chubb (by the UK govt) and stored elsewhere until installed. If a Chubb technician needs to go and look at one they have to be escorted to/from the safe. Apparently anyway.
The guy from Chubb may well be correct that Manifoil locks made for government/military use are taken from the factory upon manufacture & stored at a secure location to prevent sabotage/alteration that may reduce security of the mechanism, but this should not be taken to mean that this is the case with all Manifoil locks - they are wholesaled to other companies, who fit them to safes that are retailed them to the public.
There is at least one Australian safe manufacturer that offers their top of the line safes with a Kaba-Mas X-09 by default, but you can pay extra to have a Manifoil fitted instead. So these locks are not controlled to the point of being "government only".
It truely is an amazing lock - even better than I imagined - and is extremely well built, with very fine tolerances!
There doesn't seem to be much point in posting pictures of my lock - femurat has already done a great job & in spite of mine being manufactured in 1986 (vs 1962), mine is absolutely identical, except that it looks like his is missing the frontal lead shielding that protects the wheel pack from imaging using xrays & other radiation. His lock has holes in the dial ring to accommodate the clips to affix the shield, but the clips & shield aren't shown. Here are some pictures of the shield :
The radial cutouts are obviously there to hide the gate locations in any X-ray image of the wheel pack, but there are also shallow 'dots' running around the circumference of the shield, about 2mm from the outer edge.
These are not spaced at regular intervals & therefore look deliberate, as opposed to being part of the manufacturing process.
Upon close examination, they line up with the rivets that hold the parts of each wheel together. An image of the placement of these rivets around a wheel could be used to infer the gate's location & these 'dots' in the shield seem to be there to prevent this.
This is just one example of the great level of thought & planning that has clearly gone into the design & manufacture of this lock - there are nuances I could never have noticed just from looking at photographs of the lock.
A video recording is needed to demonstrate them. If and when I have access to a suitable camera, I will make one, unless femurat beats me to it.
Femurat is correct in saying that there is theoretically a way of taking contact points to manipulate the lock, the split cam arrangement just makes it more time consuming.
That said, the contact points are almost impossible to detect by touch. Even when I'm watching the cam & lever nose to see when contact occurs, there is little to no feedback detectable from the dial. I think the only potential way to measure contact points would be by using a microphone & good noise filtering software!
I'd be interested to know if there are any reliable accounts of this lock being successfully manipulated. Is anybody on the forum aware of a credible report of a successful manipulation?
In this link, http://www.safeventures.com/news.php?news_id=16 the writer states that they have seen Mark Bates fail only once when trying to manipulate safe locks in the UK. I cannot help but wonder if this failure was against a Manifoil.
I have recently learned that there is now a Manifoil Mk8. I have seen images of the lock with the case closed & it seems to have the same footprint as the MkIV. Does anybody have any information about this lock & how it differs from the MkIV?
...Mark
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Last edited by mercurial on Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
