Yeah, for my grad thesis I had to figure out how to incorporate a fuel injector into a chemical reactor to meter fluid flow. Novel research equipment is by defi

Yeah, for my grad thesis I had to figure out how to incorporate a fuel injector into a chemical reactor to meter fluid flow. Novel research equipment is by definition not off-the-shelf, so the skills to roll your own is often necessary to push the envelope. And a lot of the time that equipment isn't funded by a current project and you need to prove the idea is sound before you can justify asking for the money to do it. Of course if that proof of concept is good enough to keep being used all the better.