The History of Your Key

If you have read any of our previous posts, you know that Trouble Free Keys is a family businesses in our home. We are not super fancy or hi-tech. But we do have quality machines, good organizational skills, and the software needed to assure exact precision cuts on your key order. 

This blog will give you an insight into how we process your order when we get it here at our home. I think it's fun to see how small businesses, and actually larger manufacturing as well, creates a product so hopefully you do too. 

We sell thousands and thousands of key options and all of them these days are cut by my husband Jesper as he is an earlier riser lately and I have started working out of the house full time. He works full time as well but is home as his office closed in March due to COVID. So each day he starts with processing your orders before switching to his other job as a website developer....one chair over in our home office (it's a short commute with no dress code!)

So here we go! Let's process a Steelcase key ordered:

The first thing we do is print out the envelopes or labels through stamps.com with your address and correct shipping. No photos of the envelopes, but hold your horses because I'll have a form letter photo for you at the end (I know, it's super interesting!)

After we see what the orders are we go into our software and enter number and manufacturer to get the correct cut.  When a Steelcase key order comes in, we also need to check our manual for which blank it uses. It's a giant manual and, being 2021, it's weird to have a big binder....there is duct tape on it and everything....  . In this case, we find the FR359 is an AP3. Our AP key blanks are lined up together so we can easily grab what we need since we sell Steelcase keys every day. 

Before I put the key in to be cut, I stamp it with the correct code, FR359, with my state of the art hi-tech equipment (small hammer and metal block with sticky duct tape residue on it to hold the key in place). Then it goes into our Futura machine to be cut. Our computer communicates with the ipad we have attached to the Futura to send the cut information. Once it starts cutting, we get a color lights show while we wait. It's pretty awesome...well, it is the first couple times you see it but after three years of cutting keys the novelty has simmered a bit, but the show goes on regardless. 

Once keys are cut, we buff them to get rid of any residual burrs and sharp areas on the machine pictured in the far right photo. This machine is also a key duplicator so if you ever need a key copied, check with us and we can do that if we have the key blank, even when the key is not in our software. It comes in handy when I need to make a house key to pass to a neighbor watching our cats when we go on vacation. 

Now, it's all set and on it's way to you. We will send you a letter with some troubleshooting tips in case the key has trouble (sometimes older cabinets need a bit of WD40, etc), a card with a code for a FREE KEY (1FREEKEY -feel free to use the code in the photo to order now as a thank you for reading this blog....someone needs to read it and it's a bit boring...), and information if you need to get ahold of us. Our goal is quality and customer service, always. Thank you for your orders!