Biologist Kerry Bloom studies minute details of the way cells divide. Structures just one one-thousandth of a millimeter long divide up DNA as one cell splits into two.

For years, Bloom’s been using a microscope to study the inner workings of cells. But microscopy can’t tell him everything. You can’t feel the texture in a microscope image, Bloom says. You can’t turn it over, look at it from every angle.

Now, using a 3-D printer at the UNC Kenan Science Library’s Makerspace, Bloom and his colleagues study the microscopic world on a human scale. Holding a plastic model he and colleagues made of a spindle apparatus—a tiny structure that moves chromosomes around during cell division—Bloom understands better how cells read the genetic code: in bits and pieces, depending on how the fibers in the spindle twist and turn.

In this slideshow, see some of the ways that faculty, students, and staff at Carolina are using the campus’s 3-D printers to do research, make art, and help others.