As you may have already realised,
julio, the World of Biomed is polarised roughly into two camps. One with adequate funding and everything necessary available to them. The other where techs have to struggle on with next to nothing.
How do you get on with modern SMT components? It seems to me that some can be changed, whilst (many) others are, shall we say, a bit difficult (or impossible).
Meanwhile, have you seen
this link?