The technology that helped make black-light posters and concert T-shirts a cultural mainstay is now being used to make fuel cells, chip packages and PC components.

South San Francisco, Calif.-based EoPlex Technologies has come up with a technique for producing mechanical components with industrial printers. Instead of embossing a logo through thin layers of ink piled on top of each other, the company builds components by piling thin, patterned layers of ceramics, metals and other materials on top of each other and curing the individual layers as the structure takes shape.