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Abstract
An investigation has been made of the effectiveness of currently available commercial fingerprint powders and the opportunities for development of new product ranges for fingerprint detection. Using laboratory scale milling procedures, aluminium, brass, copper, zinc, and iron flake powders were produced with a wide range of flake diameters and stearic acid contents. These laboratory manufactured flake products did not surpass the commercial aluminium and commercial brass dusting powders now commonly used by scene of crime officers for bright fingerprint development on dark backgrounds. However, print qualities considerably superior to those obtained with commercial black fingerprint powders could be achieved by using a magnetic wand to apply 10–25 μm dia. iron flake powders to latent fingerprints deposited on light backgrounds. PM/0540