Ross,

I suppose I only work like thousands of other mechanical engineers in a production environment.
When you are responsible for multi squillion squids worth of machinery, and it goes down, with replacement spares going to take say 3 weeks to get there, you have to come up with quickie solutions to get it running again. Some can be temp fixes to last that 3 weeks, or in the case of my tailstock, permanent. It is all just part of the job, with a few years experience thrown in.

I am sure that you have talents that I would greatly admire, being able to program CNC for just one example.

John