You may have seen these minuteKey boxes at your local home supply store (Lowes has it near me) that let you make your own copies of common key types:

I tried it out over the weekend. Quick, painless, and if anything not very exciting to watch. I didn’t time it, but maybe 4 minutes to make three keys. I should have done video, but was too busy watching and explaining to my daughter (and having to pay an extra $1 for a premium key because of the way it looked), but if you’re curious, see the video below.

I don’t know how the economics work out. They still have a place to manually cut keys, still have someone around to do that work when needed.

It was also interesting to read the comments on the video above worrying about security. The minuteKey site doesn’t really cover security. Says the keys have to be yours (yeah) and it only does common patterns, not high security ones – good that the armored car driver can’t duplicate keys while waiting on the cash pickup!