Hey everyone, Jason here today I'm excited to show you my latest LEGO model which is this
working combination safe. Last week I posted a fun little video of some of my minifigs
stealing my gold out of it, but today I'm going to show you how it works and tell you how
you can build one of your very own. So the first thing we're going to do is
actually open it up and this works just like any other three number combination
lock you might be familiar with. We spin the dial two full rotations clockwise before
stopping at the first number, then one full revolution counter clockwise before
stopping at the second number, and then clockwise again directly to the third
number. Now obviously I don't have any numbers on this dial, I'm just using this
printed radar dish from the mini Millennium Falcon which was a set that
was released in 2003, so I just have to remember which symbols to stop at.
But anyway, now that it's unlocked I can throw the deadbolt and take the safe
out of its surrounding frame, and open it up, and see that my gold bricks are still secure, and here we can
see the discs of the combination lock as well as the deadbolt down here. Now I actually have
a stand-alone model showing how the locking mechanism works, and as you can see
they're the same. So how does a combination lock actually work. If we take a look at the
discs you can see that each one of them has a slot in it, and when the slots are all
lined up like they are now, after you inserted the correct combination, then the
deadbolt can slide into them, unlocking the safe. When the discs are all oriented
randomly, which happens when the safe is locked, and the dial is just randomly
turned, then they prevent the deadbolt from opening.
Each disc also has a tab on it, which allows it to catch on the adjacent disc., and this allows you to influence
the position of the second and third disc when you turn the dial. This is also
why you have to turn the dial two full rotations clockwise to ensure you're
actually moving the third disc when you stop at the first number, and when you stop at
the first number it actually positions the third disc into the correct
orientation. Then when you go one full revolution counter clockwise you're
catching the second disc again and when you stop the second number it stops the
second disc at the correct location. And then when you move the dial to the third
number it just stops the first disc in the correct location. Now the slots are
all lined up and I can unlock the safe again. Now let's take a look at how the safe
actually goes together. I've created a simplified version of the frame just
so you can more easily see how it's created. Now a lot of people have built LEGO safes in the past
and most of them suffer from one major flaw in that if you really want to get into them
you can just take them apart, because they're built out of LEGO, and I really
wanted to design this safe in such a way that you couldn't really do that, so as you
can see I have a Technic frame here and these are just some Technic beams that are connected
using these Technic pins, but the beams themselves are connected using
these plates that are placed from the inside and once the plates are
attached they prevent the beams from being able to be separated
and then once you actually insert the interior of the safe, because it's flush with
all those plates you can actually take those plates out in any way or detach
them from the Technic beams. Now obviously it's all just built out of plastic and good hammer or a saw will
allow you to easily get into the safe, but within the rules of the LEGO system
there's actually no way to get into the safe unless you know the combination.
So to actually lock the safe we can throw the deadbolt, which as you can see slide
between these two Technic beams and then spin the dial, which orients the
discs all randomly, and now I can't actually open the deadbolt, and that deadbolt prevents
you from sliding the safe further in or taking it out.
If you'd like to build a copy of the safe for yourself I have created step-by-step building
instructions which you can find on my website at jkbrickworks.com. I'll add a link
in the description below and at the end of the video. I hope you enjoyed
the model and the video, thanks for watching, keep on building and I'll see
you next time.