Japanese right-hand dial safes: opening it without drilling

What the lock is, whether a safe autodialer covers it, and what the job actually looks like from setup to open.

The lock

Safes made for the Japanese market commonly use a right-turning dial, which catches out equipment and technicians used to left-turning locks.

• Mechanical dial lock, right-hand rotation
• Three or four wheels depending on the model
• Direction is selected on the machine, not worked around
• Common on safes from Japanese manufacturers

Does the AutoDialer V4 open it?

The machine is built for Group 2 mechanical combination locks, three-wheel and four-wheel, with the dial turning either direction. A lock of this type falls inside that range.

Rotation direction is a setting, not an obstacle. The DIR control selects left or right independently of the step size, so a right-turning dial scans exactly the same way a left-turning one does, with the same timings.

If the lock has four wheels rather than three, expect the coarse sweep to run about 16 to 17 hours instead of about 50 minutes — see how long an autodialer takes.

What opening it looks like in practice

1. Mount the machine coaxially with the dial on the magnetic base and check by hand that it turns tight, smooth and without slip.
2. Select the number of wheels, the dial direction and the coarse step, then start.
3. Walk away. The coarse sweep on a three-wheel lock covers the whole range in about 50 minutes.
4. If it finishes without opening, step down to the next finer setting and run again.

The safe is undamaged throughout, keeps its original lock, and keeps whatever certification it carried. Full timings are in how long an autodialer takes on a Group 2 lock.

What it will not help with

If the safe has an electronic keypad rather than a dial, or a time lock, or the lock's internal mechanism is already broken, a dialling machine is not the answer. A photo will usually settle which situation you are in.