Often research and design in the water well drilling industry is driven by necessity. A problem is encountered and a tool is fabricated to fix the issue. Water well drillers are great fabricators and many innovations have come from the back of drilling companies’ shops. Sadly, many of these innovations are not shared with the rest of the industry for many years or sometimes never. In-house, fabrication creates a huge challenge in innovating equipment like solids control units. It seems counterproductive to create a new piece of equipment that a customer buys and then modifies to their expectations. At the NGWA show in December, I had several drillers tell me that they buy equipment and then modify it to fit their expectations. Many times during the show I was told, “Let my company run your solids control unit for six months, and when you get it back, it will be right.”