alt Hacker Newsyes ! but it also assumes you have: a good optical breadboard + bench + dampeners, a beautiful set of lenses, all sorts of nice lasers and kinematic mounts and linear stages etc etc
so yes, we _also_ (back in my phd lab) built equipment in that sense, but there was a pretty good foundation of Fairly Fancy stuff already sitting around !
All of those parts can also be acquired through alibaba for a stiff discount off the thorlabs pieces though. Whilst some labs have fancy stuff going around, a significant amount don't and there isn't very good equipment sharing between labs at most institutions.