Door Cylinders, what types and how they work

The types

The cylinders we find mounted on doors can basically be of 3 types:

1. Standard vertical

    

   Certainly the most common, but, at the same time the least “safe,” it is the one most easily subject to breakage due to wear and tear.
   credit img: porte-blindate.info
   The system of operation is quite simple, and we will also find it in all other cylinder systems.
   Once the key is inserted into the barrel, where there is the entrance groove, the coding expressed on the key by the engravings aligns the corresponding plungers, pushed upward by the counterpins, once aligned they allow the barrel to rotate inside the body, causing the pawl, that is, the small “lever” to perform the rotation in its wake. The pawl then, within the opening mechanism allows the movement of the various mechanical parts that in turn will allow the door to open, or close. We can see an example of this type of key in the Iseo F5 key.

2. Flat or Punched

   
   The inherent operation is the same as seen above, the difference in the key itself, passes in the fact that the coding is expressed through small holes of different sizes and depths placed on the key. The big difference we find not in the key but in the actual cylinder, where, if in some cases we have only the plungers on 1 side, although the key carries holes on both sides, functional only to give it reversibility we can see an example of a key with the Cisa Asix key, in other cases we can find multiple encodings, either expressed with multiple parallel rows or on the backs of the key of which an example can be the Cisa Astral S or the AGB U-Tech PS key. To summarize we can say that the more encodings a key has the higher the level of security of the lock, up to the insertion in the key of mechanical encoding via track grooves, just like in a car key, to give an example we can use the Securemme EvoK 64 key and its related Evo k64 cylinder.

3. Double Map

   

   There is still the Double Map type, but we will not deal with this type of key simply because it is not a cylinder but is an intrinsic system within the lock, although to this day companies such as Mottura and Securemme with the Securmap key have created the “changeover” system with those called hearts. But as mentioned we will not explore how they work in this article.

Another annotation worth mentioning is the existence, very common in Flat and Punch locks, of the coding system by means of a code imprinted on a card or shown by engraving on the key head, in fact it is the system that allows us at Duplica-chiavi.it to be able to copy the key to you, but also used in vertical keys.