Research for a university project. - Bike locks

That is a brilliant idea. I believe the US were designing this for bullet proof vests.

If your doing a BA you'll get marks for your surface design. If your on a BSc the money shot will be th mechanism - this is what I would refine. The mechanics (or lack of) of the product.

Marketability will be the success or failure of the product. It maybe worthwhile consulting with a well known brand in locks lik Chubb and asking a respected bike shop like kinoko for design.

Have you looked at using CRT card reading technology. Currently used on locker systems. Users gain access (open locks) by using cards which work on a frequency?

I get romantically attached to my bikes so having them stolen is heartbreaking!
Yeah man! Electronic Identification with a combination of modern locks (Like a Disc tumbler lock, which are ironically made by Abus) and are supposedly stupidly difficult and time consuming to pick.
Combine that with CRT or LTE technology and you're good to go. Completely personalized access that relies on your your pin/fingerprint (I know this is compromised yes) but they'll have to get to you, to get to the bike. Another layer of security if the lock is "hypothetically" mechanically difficult to breach.

The electronic side to it eludes me completely, and might over complicate or even jeopardize the security of the lock, but it's an option that could make life easier in terms of accessibility. Saying that however, Anything that sends information over the air is easily crackable unless you go into Quantum encryption or multi-layer stuff and shit! Especially if there's no trail left...which with bikes....there almost always never is once beyond the lock.

Unfortunately I'm just a bike messenger these days (I can't sit still) so I don't really have any facilities to experiment with this.
Sorry for going on off on a tangent fefelarue. Best of luck with the project.

Some kind of design that would make the bike itself totally unusable if stolen maybe?

hollow tube steel lock filled with a pressurised die like used in banks, maybe smelly too. thus lowers weight and makes a thief a lot more obvious maybe pass a current threw the lock so circuit is broken alarm sounds. unless you study composites your not gonna make a better lock through strength

^^this

Trying to make bikes unstealable means heavy, expensive & cumbersome.

I want something light, as easy to deploy as locking a car (not threading through grubby wheels and picking up oil from the chain), and where it is clear that any attempt to steal the bike is simply not worth the effort.

Anus penetrating seatposts.

Put me down for 5.

So generally what we're saying is that it would be good to have a lock that deters the criminal because of something other than the outright strength of the lock? e.g. alarm / dye etc..

Broken rectum.

The dye idea is quite good though.

Some sort of dangerous controlled pressurised canister hidden deep inside the frame that you can activate if your bike gets stolen. Expands, deforms the tubing and renders the frame useless. If I cant have it nor can you approach?

Ohh i see haha!

With the chainsaw trousers, I think it's just kevlar or similar in there. They stop the chainsaw because it pulls out like a thread and gets stuck in the blades. The material itself can still be easily cut with cutters and even special scissors as far as i'm aware :S I will definitely look into lighter materials though..

So kevlar threads can be cut. But how quickly? Is it possible to do that with bolt croppers, quickly? Is it possible to do that with an angle grinder, quickly? I think you need to be thinking about how slow it is to cut, rather than focussing on making it uncuttable, since no such thing exists. The main tools of choice, from what I can gather, are angle grinders and bolt croppers. So the things to work on are how to hinder those tools, right?

Have you ever noticed that no-one seems to have proved the 'Sheldon method' of locking bikes is rubbish? And all we're talking about there is it being a bit tricky to cut through a lightweight aluminium rim, and the two wire beads in the tyre! Must weigh about 600g total ...

Its not tricky to do that (though this guy does a particularly shit job):
Sheldon brown locking method potential flaw - YouTube

It is quite a regular method of stealing, but means that the bike is not instantly rideable, so requires more than your standard bike theif's level of balls.

Some kind of design that would make the bike itself totally unusable if stolen maybe?

BB shell is also a hinge, some kind of locking join in the top tube. You'd have to saw through a tube to get the bike... making it unrideable, and worthless.

Obvious implications for ride quality but there are those "dismantleable" frame thingies so it's possible, and a city bike would benefit more from the weight reduction...

So kevlar threads can be cut. But how quickly? Is it possible to do that with bolt croppers, quickly? Is it possible to do that with an angle grinder, quickly? I think you need to be thinking about how slow it is to cut, rather than focussing on making it uncuttable, since no such thing exists. The main tools of choice, from what I can gather, are angle grinders and bolt croppers. So the things to work on are how to hinder those tools, right?

This is true, good point.

How confident would people feel locking their bike up with a much much smaller lock, but if tampered with, a very loud "rape-alarm" style siren activates from somewhere within the bike?

It's been done before but the alarm is always in the lock, not in the bike, so you can just ride the bike away..

How confident would people feel locking their bike up with a much much smaller lock, but if tampered with, a very loud "rape-alarm" style siren activates from somewhere within the bike?

It's been done before but the alarm is always in the lock, not in the bike, so you can just ride the bike away..

2 points

1. Is a lock still a lock if it isn't there?
   
2. What would stop the thief still riding away with it when they're so brazen these days as to cut locks in front of people in daylight!
   

just thinking out loud

Lockable steering?

Removable pedals exist, but have been designed primarily with bike storage in mind rather than security.

That's the thing, there's be a siren coming out of a bike which would potentially get the attention of the police, but would people on a crowded street actually try and stop the guy?

If combined with a GPS tracker though, might be better?

But going along these lines, you may as well not even lock the bike up and just rely on the fact it's alarmed and tracked..

just thinking out loud

Lockable steering?

Removable pedals exist, but have been designed primarily with bike storage in mind rather than security.

Both would stop them riding the bike away, but it's not hard to carry a bike or stick it in a car. I think they'd only be good as an added layer of security on top of a hench D lock

I agree.

A thief with an angle grinder, a van and someone keeping an eye-out at 5am (this is how they do it in Bristol) will pretty much always get the bike. More casual crims may just pass by a bike with a D lock off the ground and confusing/awkward secondary security.

We don't carry our own street furniture around with us,
so,
the street furniture could have welded to it 16 or 18mm links,
(figures from the Bike lock thread),
so all we need is an unpickable tougher small D-lock.

We don't carry our own street furniture around with us,
so,
the street furniture could have welded to it 16 or 18mm links,
(figures from the Bike lock thread),
so all we need is an unpickable tougher small D-lock.

But that would only work if the country's street furniture was redesigned..

At the moment there aren't enough places to tie up with a small D lock so there's not enough freedom for it to work..

We don't carry our own street furniture around with us,
so,
the street furniture could have welded to it 16 or 18mm links,
(figures from the Bike lock thread),
so all we need is an unpickable tougher small D-lock.

When was the last time you heard a thief lockpicking a lock as opposed to simply brute forcing it?

This will not be the idea I go with, but what are people's thoughts on this:
(Haven't done the locking mechanism yet, and would obviously be combined with a security pedal wrench or similar)

If you are studying product design it is actually better you do not worry about a functioning end product, it is much more about exploration of ideas, even abstract ones.