Like many of us, [Benjamin Poilve] was fascinated when he took apart a broken printer. He kept the parts, but unlike most of us, he did something with them, building a neat little plotter called ...

Most of the mounts and small parts are made from easily worked PVC sheet stock. Precision rails were scavenged from old Ricoh copiers. Epson printers provided the tubing which became motor couplers.

Scientists are exploring that futuristic vision by using special 3-D printers to make living body parts. Called bioprinters, these machines use human cells as “ink.” A standard 3-D printer ...