Michigan police worked with a researcher to use 3d printing in a new, crime-solving way. They started from a fingerprint scan, then printed it into the 3-dimensional world, in order to use it as a fake finger. Why? To unlock a mobile phone.
a man was murdered, and the police think there might be clues to who murdered him stored in his phone. But they can’t get access to the phone without his fingerprint or passcode. So instead of asking the company that made the phone to grant them access, they’re going another route: having the Jain lab create a 3D printed replica of the victim’s fingers. With them, they hope to unlock the phone.
One entertaining detail:
“We don’t know which finger the suspect used,” he told me by phone. “We think it’s going to be the thumb or index finger—that’s what most people use—but we have all ten.”
Mobile phone fear meets 3d printing anxiety?
(thanks to Brenda Landis for the link; finger photo by Quinn Dobrowski)
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