If it sticks, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Uncertain Principles: Eucatastrophe in Physics

Sometimes, an equipment failure can be the best thing that happens to an experiment. This is particularly true in labs that rely on short-term labor like post-docs (who are generally hired for about two years) and graduate students (who are in a given lab longer, but typically in charge of the experiment for only a few years), where kludgey short-term solutions implemented in order to get fast results can become locked in as new experiments build on the first one.

I’m proud to say that there is no duct tape in the devices we’ve built. It exists in one or two places in the lab (even involving ductwork). When you’re in it for the long haul, there’s more incentive to do things right. But I remember at TRIUMF, we needed a variable voltage reference, which ended up being a 2 9V batteries in series discharging slowly through a MegaOhm-ish potentiometer acting as a voltage divider. Dial up what you need, and it lasted long enough that it was easier to replace the batteries than do up a proper circuit.