Although undergraduate research experience has proven to have positive effects on student outcomes, such opportunities are not always widely available. Options can be especially limited for early-career engineering students who have limited research experience. One approach to addressing this issue is to partner engineering instructors with active research laboratories to build research experiences into general engineering courses. This article details a collaboration between engineering and chemistry faculty to develop a pipeline of interdisciplinary, research-based projects for second-year engineering students. Chemistry laboratories are a good fit for this approach because they require a wide array of machinery and hardware for experimentation. This work also takes advantage of recent trends toward do-it-yourself labware that has been used with increasing frequency in colleges and universities through expanded access to 3D printing labs. Specifically, we present 3D printing projects as a potential conduit between chemistry and engineering that can enable engineering students to use their design skills to contribute immediately to laboratory projects. Our findings show that this approach allows engineering faculty to meet course objectives while involving students in interdisciplinary research that offers tangible benefits to chemistry laboratories.