Keysave: Legal 3D Printed Locksmithing

Now even insurance companies are waking up to the opportunities of 3D printing. Belgian insurance company DVV and Belgian advertising company Happiness Brussels have teamed up to make sure that you’ll never worry about losing your keys again. Think of it as a 3D printing locksmith. It’s called Keysave and it’s an online repository for your key designs. Watch the cute ad below:

keysave.be / Your keys are always here. from stuffcore on Vimeo.

Say you know that you always lose the key to your shed in the junk drawer of your kitchen.  With Keysave, you can have that key scanned and stored in the cloud so that, in the inevitable event that you lose your key, you can download the .stl and have it printed at home, at a local hackspace or via some online provider. Though you can print your key in some long lasting material like metal, you can also print the key in ABS or PLA (or nylon for a bit more durability) for a quick fix.

They’re still working out the pricing, the number of keys that you can save, and where you’ll be able to get your keys scanned, but with Keysave, you can scan some number of keys that you own for the company to store in a secure database.  At the time of scanning, you’re given a special username, password, and security question to ensure that others can’t access your files.  Also, you are never referred to by name and your keys are not linked to what they unlock so that, even if someone were to access the secure cloud server, they wouldn’t know to whom the keys belonged or to what they were for.  At least, that’s what the company’s website says.  And, of course, you’re not allowed to duplicate the keys that say “Do Not Duplicate” on them.

Or, if you’re too broke to use the Keysave service, you can try Nirav Patel’s key copying method, which might take a bit of work on your part.  Or, if you’ve already lost your keys and all you have is a picture of them, you can talk to this group of MIT hackers who can recreate keys by analyzing photographs. Just don’t expect to see any of your stuff when you get the door open.

Source Image: Thingiverse user ttsalo