A collaborative effort between the Story County Sheriff’s Office and the Ames Lab’s Midwest Forensic Research Center has produced a new tool that will aid police in the development of fingerprints.

The “glove box,” as it is dubbed, is a “modified fingerprint development chamber,” said Robert Lipert, the Ames Lab associate scientist who developed the machine.

Lipert said super glue is placed on an object and placed in the glove box to obtain fingerprints. The super glue vapors are hardened to show fingerprint residue.

“The glove box also has large windows to see fingerprints developing, as well as two ports with large gloves to stick hands in to handle the evidence inside the enclosure,” Lipert said.

Lipert said the glove box is an improvement over previous fingerprinting systems because it gives the handler more control of evidence.

“You can stop development or turn the evidence over if you know where the prints are,” Lipert said. “It also lets you pass evidence in and out of the chamber without interrupting the process. Therefore you can process more items in a shorter period.”

Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald said the partnership between the Ames Lab and the sheriff’s office has produced a beneficial product.

“The previous system was basically a fish aquarium,” Fitzgerald said. “This is a state-of-the-art glove box.”

Fitzgerald said the new technology improves a familiar fingerprinting technique.

“Fingerprinting with super glue is not brand new, but the glove box is,” he said. “It allows us to adjust humidity and temperature.”

Fitzgerald also noted the purchase of the glove box, one of only two in existence, came from drug-forfeiture funds. “No tax dollars were used for this,” said Fitzgerald.

Lipert came up with the idea after talking with criminal experts at the State Crime Laboratory. “We talked about ways Iowa State could be of service to them, and they asked that we help them out in developing fingerprints,” he said. “They explained the process, and we came back to Ames and thought about how we could make a better chamber.”

Terry Herman, an engineer at the Ames Laboratory, was also instrumental in the development of the glove box, said Lipert. “He came up with the mechanical drawings, and took it back to the shop and made the physical device,” said Lipert.

Lipert said he has no current plans to make more glove boxes, but its future outside of Story County is unclear.

“We’re not a commercial place,” he said.

“But, it is something that [could] potentially go nationally.”