AFTE Store - Topography Measurements and Performance Comparisons between NIST SRM 2460 Standard Bullet Masters and BKA Bullet Replicas

Polymer replication potentially provides an alternative technology to producing a second series of the Standard Reference Material (SRM) bullets produced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). To test this potential, two SRM 2460 bullets were used as masters for the fabrication of replica bullets at the Federal Criminal Police Office, Bundeskriminalamt (BKA). The surface topography of the SRM masters and the replicas were measured and compared to determine their topography similarity. The topography comparisons revealed surface contamination of a replica bullet made from the first SRM bullet master. However, the surface contamination problem was significantly improved with a replica bullet made from the second SRM bullet master. To compare the performance similarity of imaging correlations, one of the replica bullets was imaged at the National Laboratory Center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) using an Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS)*. The image of the replica bullet was correlated with those of the SRM bullets previously tested from 2002 to 2006. The Max Phase correlation scores were used for performance comparisons. There was no significant difference in the imaging performance between the SRM bullets and the replica bullet.