Key Cutting Robot: Locksmith Benches to ABB Arms

How the key cutting robot grew from locksmith benches and 1917 duplicators to minuteKEY and KeyMe kiosks, and where ABB robots fit in making blanks and locks.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/7/20265 min read

Copying a house key used to mean finding a locksmith or a hardware counter and waiting while someone ran your key through a machine. Today a key cutting robot in a supermarket or hardware store does the same job behind glass: you insert the key, a camera reads it and the machine cuts a copy. This post follows the work from hand-filed keys and the first duplicating machines to the robotic kiosks of minuteKEY and KeyMe, looks at what is happening in the business now, and explains where ABB's small industrial robots could fit in the factories that make the blanks and locks.

Lime green minuteKEY key copying kiosk with a screen standing in a hardware store aisle

A minuteKEY key duplication kiosk at a Menards store in Gillette, Wyoming. Photo: Mr. Satterly / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

From hand-filed keys to the first duplicating machines

For centuries a locksmith made the whole lock as well as its key, which meant hours of hand-cutting screws and filing metal at the bench, and lock designs grew more complicated during the 18th century. The pin tumbler lock is also called the Yale lock, after Linus Yale Jr. (1821 to 1868), the American inventor of the cylinder lock, who co-founded the Yale Lock Company with Henry R. Towne. Pin tumbler locks spread widely, and so did flat metal keys that needed copying. A locksmith could still file a copy by eye, but that was slow work.

Small shop counter with key cutting machines and hundreds of key blanks hanging on the wall behind

A key cutting and shoe repair shop in Montélimar, France, 2019, with walls of key blanks. Photo: Celeda / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A machine that copies one key onto another may first have been invented in the United States in 1917, according to Wikipedia's history of key duplication. The design is still familiar. The original key sits in one vise and a blank in a parallel vise; as a guide traces the original, a cutting wheel cuts the blank to the same shape. Afterwards the new key is deburred with a wire brush, because burrs would be sharp and could foul the lock. Most key cutting machines in shops today follow this early 20th century layout.

Worn green base holding an electric motor, belt and two key vises of an old key cutter

An old electric key cutting machine with two vises and a cutting wheel. Photo: Fumikas Sagisavas / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

A second family of machines cuts keys from numbers rather than by tracing. With a punch machine such as the Curtis key clipper, the operator measures the depth of each notch and sets a slider, and a lever cuts the whole notch at once. Codes from a lock or a car's VIN can replace the original key entirely. Hillman, the US hardware supplier, bought the retail key business of Curtis Industries in 1995 and Axxess Technologies in 2000, and in 2018 it acquired MinuteKey, a maker of robotic key cutting kiosks, which it still runs as a separate robotics division.

Hands working the clamps of a grey and red key duplicating machine on a bench

A key duplication machine in use at a locksmith's bench. Photo: Visualeagle / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Robotic key kiosks in stores today

The kiosk that most shoppers now see came from KeyMe, which Greg Marsh founded in New York City in 2012. Its machines use computer vision and neural networks trained on thousands of key types to identify a key, and KeyMe says its system supports 50 times as many key types as traditional machines. In 2016 it had about two hundred kiosks that had cut roughly a million keys. By 2019 it had more than 2,300 kiosks in 46 states, copying keys in under 30 seconds, and by 2025 the count was over 7,000.

Tall yellow and black KeyMe kiosk with a touch screen and the words copy any key

A KeyMe self-service key copying kiosk at Westland Mall, January 2020. Photo: Phillip Pessar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The kiosks now copy brass house keys, key fobs and many car keys, with or without transponders, and some sit in grocery stores, Walmarts and corner shops. Competition has been fierce enough to reach court: in 2021 a jury in Marshall, Texas found that KeyMe did not infringe Hillman's patents. Hillman remains the other big name. In September 2026 it closed a $315 million purchase of Kanebridge, a master distributor of industrial fasteners, and its product list still includes key and engraving services. Hillman has said it will report third quarter results on 3 November.

Green minuteKEY kiosk with a screen and a copy keys in a minute sign beside a store wall

A minuteKEY kiosk inside a Walmart in Surrey, British Columbia. Photo: OlEnglish / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not build key kiosks, and the cutter inside a kiosk is a small dedicated machine. ABB's robots fit better upstream, in the factories that stamp key blanks and build lock cylinders. A compact arm such as the new generation IRB 1200 is designed for machine tending and small parts, and it could load blanks into stamping and milling machines or move finished cylinders to test stations. We found no ABB customer project of this kind, so treat it as an idea. Our post on door hardware robots looks at how ABB grinding cells and cobots could fit into lock production.

White compact ABB IRB 1200 robot arm on a red pedestal against a plain background

The new generation ABB IRB 1200, launched in 2025, a compact arm for machine tending and small parts. Photo: ABB

What comes next for key cutting and locks

At home, the key itself is changing. Car keys now carry transponders that must be programmed as well as cut, and many houses are moving to smart locks that open with a code or a phone. Kiosks have followed: KeyMe's app once let users scan a key with a phone and store the copy in the cloud. Commentators worried that someone with a few seconds of access to a key could copy it that way, and key control gets harder as copying gets easier.

Close view of a car key clamped in a key cutting machine next to a black remote key fob

A car key with a remote fob being copied on a key cutting machine. Photo: Christian Heimig / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

In factories, the lock and key business is a classic high-mix job. There are thousands of blank profiles, short runs and frequent changeovers, which suits cobots and small robots that can be moved and reprogrammed quickly. An ABB SWIFTI CRB 1100 or an IRB 1300 cell could tend a milling machine on one shift and be moved to another machine for the next batch. Cells like that are usually planned and tested in RobotStudio first, and a no-code tool lets operators change jobs without writing RAPID.

Man holding a tablet beside a white ABB SWIFTI robot arm picking parts from red trays

An engineer programs an ABB SWIFTI CRB 1100 cobot with a tablet at a small workshop bench. Photo: ABB

Money is the first hurdle. A kiosk has to cut enough keys a day to pay for its spot in the store, while a robot cell in a lock plant has to earn its price over many small batches. Security keys that are designed to be hard to copy, such as Medeco's, still go to a trained locksmith, and 15 US states require locksmiths to hold a licence. For most house keys, though, the copy will come from a machine, and the person who used to cut it will more likely be fixing locks or programming car keys.

Woman in safety glasses holding an ABB FlexPendant next to a grey ABB IRB 1300 arm

An ABB IRB 1300 small industrial robot with an operator holding the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

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