Tungsten/Titanium carbide lock coatings

Quoted message said:

Since the harder a lock is the more difficult it is to cut, does anyone
know if anyone has tried to coat lock shackles and/or bodies with a
very thin layer of say tungsten or titanium carbide, or some other
super-hard material?

A ceramic coating of that sort would likely spall and chip away from
the area being cut.

This general principle has already been employed in a simpler way, with
carburizing, aka "case hardening" of steel. A process employing heat
and a carbon-rich, oxygen-starved enclosure results in a cortex of very
hard material over a core of tougher steel.

Though I don't know of any specifically, I would expect that some
existing U-locks use carburized shackles.

Chalo Colina

Quoted message said:

Since the harder a lock is the more difficult it is to cut, does anyone
know if anyone has tried to coat lock shackles and/or bodies with a
very thin layer of say tungsten or titanium carbide, or some other
super-hard material? A thin coating makes it very difficult to
penetrate with even the *best* cutting tools, and the interior is
high-quality steel which isn't so brittle and expensive. Speaking of
which, how much would such a superlock cost?

As of the last time I looked into this (for a different purpose),
carbides in general can't be deposited, they have to be formed and
then soldered in place. Machining a thin shell to fit the shape of a
U-lock's shackle would be a time-intensive task. You're talking about
an end product that's likely to be high into three figures, if not
four, either in US dollars or Euros. For that expenditure, you would
gain increased resistance to some common cutting tools. Since that's
not the method employed in the vast majority of U-lock-defeating
attacks, and since the carbide shell would add little or nothing to
the shackle's ability to resist leverage attacks, the increased cost
would produce little benefit.

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