Internship at the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State: Human Rights Work and

3D Printing Technology

Megan Veltri

mfv7@txstate.edu

Introduction

During the Fall 2014 semester I completed an internship with the Forensic

Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS). This internship included human rights

work with Operation Identification (Operation ID) and work with a newly implemented

3D Printer. Although these two aspects of my internship differed, both projects were

sometimes used together. For example, CT scans of Operation ID individuals are

currently being used to create 3D Prints. In this internship report I will discuss the

applications of human rights work and 3D Printing technology in Anthropology and the

experiences that I had during my internship. I will also discuss the relevance of 3D

printing technology used in Operation Identification.

FACTS and Operation Identification

The Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State is a research facility located in

San Marcos, Texas. Research at FACTS includes faculty and student lead investigation in

human decomposition processes, human skeletal variation, forensic osteological methods,

and the postmortem interval. Individuals donate themselves or their deceased family

members to FACTS through a willed-body donation program. When a donation is

received it is placed at the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility (FARF), one of three

laboratories in association with FACTS. Here, donations are placed to decompose and

track rates of decay. When a donation has completed the decomposition process, the

 

 

remains are inventoried and transported from FARF to the Osteology Research and

Processing Lab (ORPL). ORPL contains a multi-purpose classroom and the processing

laboratory. The processing room is where donations are taken to further remove tissue

from bones and clean the remains for curation. Willed-body donations are not the only

remains being processed at ORPL, however.

In 2011, FACTS faculty member Dr. Kate Spradley began collaborating with

other forensic anthropologists from universities throughout Texas. This project called

Operation ID, aims to identify the remains of migrants found in Brooks County. Brooks

County encompasses Falfurrias, Texas and is located close to the Texas-Mexico border.

The majority of these remains are unidentified, with bodies buried in unmarked graves in

border towns like Falfurrias. Brooks County receives no federal funding to assist with the

identification of these individuals. Without funding, Brooks County is unable to properly

archive the mass amount of remains they receive. Since the first exhumation of unmarked

graves in Falfurrias in 2011, Brooks County now sends all immigrant remains directly to

ORPL along with personal effects of the individuals. These remains are left at FARF

until they can be processed at ORPL. After processing they are catalogued, inventoried,

and uploaded to missing person’s databases. It was my job under Dr. Spradley to hand

wash the personal effects of these individuals, which included but was not limited to

clothing, personal photographs, identification cards, money, prayer cards, medicine, and

other personal items. The hopes of Operation ID are to identify immigrants and return the

remains to their families.

Many individuals cross the border for different reasons. The main patterns in

immigration are consequences of poverty and high unemployment rates (Datta 2004).

 

 

With drug cartels in Mexico implementing fear or death to citizens, many travel to

America in hopes of relief from this distress. Most immigrants do not plan on staying

indefinitely (Castle 2002). For some, the main goal is to work, save their money, and

return home. In recent years, immigration laws in the United States have become stricter,

allowing less leeway for individuals who are crossing illegally. Current immigration

laws in the United States affect immigration patterns and conversely the amount of

immigrants crossing the border (Meyers 2000).

However, a person’s nationality does not determine whether they should receive

basic human rights, including identification after death. With the amount of migrants

currently at ORPL, it is our duty to bring closure to their families. These individuals

prepare themselves for their journey and carry their most loved and prized possessions

with them. It’s simply not right to let these individuals go unidentified in our legal

systems.

For Operation ID my main focus was to hand wash personal effects of

unidentified individuals, keep detailed notes about each garment or item washed, hang

clothing to dry on a rack with associated notes attached, photograph cleaned clothing,

write new extensive notes about the cleaned article, and label and store the effects for

future use. Each step in washing clothing for an unidentified individual is important for

the identification process. When clothing and other personal effects are first received,

they are completely covered in decomposition from the individual. Typically, the medical

examiner’s office does not have the time or funds to remove every personal effect from

the body, and they are usually left on the individual. When volunteers exhume the bodies,

most of the clothing is removed and placed in gallon size freezer bags with notes written

 

 

in Sharpie on the outside. The bodies are moved to FARF and the bags of personal effects

are placed in large freezers at ORPL until they are removed for cleaning.

In my experience, washing personal effects is impactful. Something that was once

dark brown now has patterns. It is a reminder that this individual was once living and

breathing, with family members still searching for them. When the clothing was done

drying, it was then removed from the drying rack for photographing. Having multiple

pictures of an item can further the chances of identification. Photographs are taken with

the clothing placed on a large black piece of cardstock paper with a scale for reference of

size. Photographs include shots of the front, back and important markings on item, or

front, back, sides and heels of shoes. Extensive hand written notes were usually taken in

association with the photographs.

When we finished, all the associated articles with that case are labeled and bagged,

and stored on shelves in ORPL. The photos were uploaded to the computer in ORPL’s

dry lab for input to missing person’s databases.

3D Printing and its Complications

The Grady Early Forensic Anthropology Research Laboratory (GEFARL) is

another lab in collaboration with FACTS. GEFARL houses a micro-computed

tomography (CT) scanner and the 3D Systems ProJet 660 Pro 3D Printer. The micro-CT

scanner is a large piece of machinery that has the ability to take radiographic images of

an item without destroying the inside of the object. At FACTS, bones are typically placed

inside the scanner using acrylic containers with Styrofoam supports to hold the bone in

place. The CT scanner then scans the bones inside and outside structures and sends the

 

 

scan to a computer. After this process, my internship advisor uses specialized CT

computers and

Micro-CT Scanner--Photograph courtesy of FACTS 2014

programs to edit new scans. Usually the resolutions of the CT scans were too high, which

we later discovered affected the 3D printing programs. Once noticing this problem, we

lowered the resolution of the scans so that I can upload them into the 3D printing

programs.

3D Printers have proved the importance of this detailed technology. At FACTS

the 3DS 3D Printer could be used to print many different parts, including skeletons of

donations in the Texas State Donated Skeletal Collection. In the osteology classroom,

students are currently provided with a limited amount of actual skeletal specimens, most

of which are casts. With 3D printing we can scan specific skeletal bones of interest, print

them, and use them in the classroom. The same can be said for skeletal pathology classes.

 

 

While casts of skeletal remains can offer an advantage to students, CT scans and 3D

prints of skeletal material are much more

3DS ProJet 660 Pro 3D Printer—Photograph by kentie.nl

accurate and therefore more useful to educate students. The accuracy of 3D prints can

help produce mass quantities of artifacts and skeletal material that will be useful to

educators and students (Wachowiak and Karas 2009).

3D printing has a great effect on Operation ID in the future as well. We are able to

scan the skeletal remains of these individuals and use the 3D prints to study human

variation. The social race of an unidentified person is found using FORDSIC 2.0, a

computer program that uses cranial and post-cranial measurements of an individual to

relate that individual to a specific social race group. The pre-determined racial categories

 

 

are taken from measurements of a population of individuals, whose measurements are

then implemented into separate racial categories in FORDSIC. When an individual’s

measurements are placed in FORDISC, the program relates their measurements to the

closest racial group. Doing so aids forensic anthropologists in narrowing down the

possibilities for identification of an individual. According to some studies, FORDISC has

incorrectly attributed Spanish crania to non-European or North African Samples

(Williams et al. 2005). FORDISC has small populations of individuals in the

Latin/Guatemalan racial groups. 3D prints of Operation ID individuals can be used to

expand FORDISC’s Latin/Guatemalan groups even after the remains have been given

back to families.

A recent Operation ID individual was transported to ORPL who was identified as

having achondroplastic dwarfism. The long bones of this individual have been CT

scanned and it is my next job to print the items. With the 3D prints of these remains,

professors can study and further their knowledge of this genetic mutation. 3D prints can

also protect fragile skeletal material, such as the sphenoid bone. As stated earlier, these

fragile parts can be scanned then printed without having to use the actual sensitive bones

afterwards. In archaeology, 3D printing can be used to print fiber bundles or other

artifacts for examination of the 3D part without harming the original artifact. Since 3D

printing uses a digital template to print parts, the printer can create enlarged or small-

scale prints of parts (Bushwick 2011). However, the main disadvantage of 3D printing is

the print time (Wang et al. 2014). Larger 3D parts, like a skull, can take up to eight hours

to print. This disadvantage might persuade some anthropologists to opt for a quicker

 

 

option. With 3D printing technology rapidly improving, the advantages of prints will

quickly out weigh the disadvantages (Wang et al. 2014).

Taung Child skulls and arrow point prints—Photo by the author

My duties involving the 3D Printer included the use of two 3D Edit and 3D Print

to edit and apply color to scanned CT file, remove errors, gaps and inverted triangles,

adjust parts, apply labels to parts, clean and remove parts from the 3D Printer after

printing, and apply color-bond to parts.

 

 

The ProJet 660 Pro 3D Printer that FACTS utilizes is about seven feet long and

five feet tall. It has two compartments, one for printing and cleaning and another for

detailed cleaning. The easiest and hardest part of 3D printing was the actual printing. To

print a part, I would easily click a command in the 3D Print program labeled “Build

Print”. The printer would then turn on and request for the build bed (the actual print box

that holds the printed parts) to be elevated. After these tasks were complete, the printer

would begin printing. The hard part was waiting for the print to complete. Typically,

printing a decent sized object (e.g., a skull) would take up to eight or nine hours. The

printer was left to print over night during these instances. The printer uses gypsum plaster

powder, which is laid down in layers and heated to glue the layers together. When

printing was completed, the parts are left to sit and harden in the powder.

When I would return the next day of my internship, I began first by removing and

cleaning the printed parts. After the printing is complete, the build box is full of white

gypsum powder that needs to be vacuumed (using a hose attached to the printer) to

remove the powder. The hose recycles the powder for future use. The second step is to

remove the parts into the second compartment of the printer. Here, parts are thoroughly

cleaned with a pressurized air hand tool that removed powder from detailed spots. I also

used painting brushes to remove powder. Thirdly, the parts are submerged in Color Bond,

a type of super glue-like liquid, which brightens colors and seals the part. Lastly, the

objects are left to dry before use.

I found that I spent most of my time using the 3D Edit program to edit and

prepare parts for printing. For example, when something like a skull is CT scanned, I can

open up the scan in 3D Edit to fix the errors associated with the scan. Errors typically

 

 

include gaps or spaces in the scanned part. I spent time manually editing layers of gaps

before the part was deemed ready for printing. There are many steps involved in editing a

gap in a part. Usually I select a gap from an error list, decide if the gap had any others

close to it that resemble it, and merge the gaps together. If the original gap does not have

another similar gap near it, I filled in the original gap with triangles, which basically

stitch the gap to the part. Any gaps that the scanned skull might have will reflect in the

part that is printed. Gaps are not wanted when trying to print a mostly solid piece. The

editing took me longest depending on how many errors there were. Amount of errors for

a part ranged from four to three hundred.

Once all of the layers are fixed, the part was with a compatible extension so that it

could be opened in 3D Print. In 3D Print, I placed the parts in the program exactly how

they would be printed. In 3D Print I could also calculate estimated time for prints and

potential costs. To determine the cost of a part or parts, a dialog box was opened in 3D

Print that showed the estimated time for printing the parts. This report was saved and then

opened in a Microsoft Excel template, which would determine the amount and costs of

materials used for the part. From this template I could save a PDF of the costs and e-mail

it to anyone who was interested in printing a part.

Because of the dense material associated with the 3D printing programs, my work

with the 3D printer was usually done through trial and error with the advice of my

internship advisors. The 3D printer has many separate program manuals associated with

it, which broadly cover the use of the programs. I used this material in conjunction with

my own logic to create printable parts. Overall, I enjoyed working on the 3D Printer.

After finally being able to print the first batch of parts, I felt that all of my hard work had

 

 

paid off. The 3D printer has many dense processes and programs that I am still learning.

In spite of that, I will continue this project after my internship has ended.

Conclusion

Overall, my internship experience has been a positive one. Through this

experience I have been able to understand the importance of these projects at FACTS and

most importantly the roles they play in our community. I have gained valuable

knowledge in using personal items for identification purposes and the use of 3D printing

technology to benefit anthropology. Immigration identification and 3D printing

technology is propelling our society into a more futuristic way of thinking.

 

 

References

Bushwick, Sophie. "3-D Printing Gets Ahead: Anthropologists Use Printing Technology

to Model Fossils." Scientific American Global RSS. September 19, 2011.

Accessed August 30, 2014. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/three-3d-

printing-anthropologists-use-printing-technology-to-model-fossils/.

Castles, S. 2002. “Migration and Community Formation Under Conditions of

Globalization.” International Migration Review 36 (4):1143-1168.

Datta, P. 2004. “Push-Pull Factors of Undocumented Migration from Bangladesh to West

Bengal: A Perception Study.” The Qualitative Report 9 (2):335-358.

Meyers, E. 2000. “Theories of International Immigration Policy-A Comparative

Analysis.” International Migration Review 34 (4):1245-1282.

Wachiowack, M.J. and B. V. Karas. 2009. “3D Scanning and Replication for Museum

and Cultural Heritage Applications.” Journal of the American Institute for

Conservation 48 (2):141-158.

Wang, X., Wei, J., Yi, X., Zhang, J., Shang, K., Wang, Q. 2014. “3D Printing

Technology and the Adaptability of Printing Material.” Applied Mechanics and

Materials 633:569-573.

 

 

Williams, F.L., Belcher, R.L., Armelagos, G.J. 2005. “Forenisc Misclassification of

Ancient Nubian Crania: Implications for Assumptions about Human Variation.”

Current Anthropology 46 (2):340-346.