Locksmith Tip | A Better way to Cut Hard Metal Keys

Do you have an automatic high-security key machine similar to the image below? If so, you know that they were meant to cut all brass keys, but it's becoming more and more popular to see many hard metal keys. With that being said, let me give you some tips about two settings that you can change on virtually any automatic high-security key machine to cut those hard metal keys more efficiently. 

The first setting is going to be the steps. These steps are about how many passes on each side of the key will be taken to cut the key. Typically, you're going to see two on the standard machine, and it means that the cutter is going to do two passes down each side of the key to cut it to all the depths. If you want to up that value, you want to switch it to four or five, so it's going to make four or five passes on each side to cut the key.

Is that going to add more time?

Absolutely. At the same time, it's going to allow the cutter to cut a little bit or one depth at a time on each pass, and that's going to reduce the amount of stress put on that cutter. 

The second setting you want to try to find is the cutting speed. It is not about the cutting speed of the cutter spinning; it is the speed at which it's cutting and what that is. That's how fast the jaw is moving on the cutter cutting the key, and you need to slow it down between 10 to 20% when you cut hard metal keys.

That way, we're going to change the number of passes that the cutter will take to cut the key, and then we're also going to change the speed at which it's doing it. So, it's going to allow the cutter to cut, and it's not going to force or press anything, which should hopefully enable your cutter to last longer.