Brad and Chad

When faculty and instructors approach us with a concept for bringing emerging tech into the classroom, we delight in providing them with ideas. This time, though, the result proved especially thrilling. We printed out two skulls to help students get a visceral experience with a philosophical concept. We did not anticipate how cool the bronze filament would make them.

In Fall 2025, UNM Department of History PhD Candidate Emily Heimerman is teaching a course titled ‘The Living and the Undead.’ The course description reads as follows:

What happens when we die? Are ghosts real? Can we talk to the dead? Can we bring the dead back to life? These and many other questions will be tackled in “The Living and the Undead.” Our class, which will focus on premodern European and Mediterranean societies, introduces undergraduate students to a variety of primary and secondary sources concerning the living, the dying, the dead, saints, angels, demons, jinn, ghosts, witches, monsters, fairies, and the mysterious undead. Through these figures, students will also explore the physical and metaphorical spaces of tombs, cemeteries, catacombs, places of worship, wildernesses, Sheol, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, the underworld, and the “in between” zones. By the end of the course, students will then turn to our modern world, comparing these premodern worldviews with contemporary religious traditions, legends, folklore, and popular culture.

Heimerman wanted a 3D model of a skull to help her students understand the concept of memento mori.

On Thingiverse, we found an ideal model for this purpose. The skull is mostly anatomically correct but adjusted so that its printing requires no support material.

We chose bronze filament because we thought that might look neat. And we were not disappointed. The bronze shimmer made the skull look so awesome that we just had to print a second one. Now that we have two bronze skulls in the Amaranth studio, we have fondly named them Brad and Chad.