I Made My Own X-Ray Machine 

I'm planning make one of those voltage machines at home... It is safe right? I have too much spare time so I want some fun projects like this..

It would be a good idea to place the rectifier inside a steel container when you are operating the device. 1-2 mm of steel will effectively filter out all X-rays below 40 KeV. It is important to remove these, as they are readily absorbed by the skin and will cause radiation burns. Modern medical equipment filters out everything of low energy to ensure only the deep penetrating rays make it to the patient. These higher energy rays are far less likely to deposite thier energy within the subjects body, so they are much safer.

3:50 Styropyro made a GREAT video about this and the fact is that these static discharges dump several amps at a time. The reason it doesnt kill/hurt you is because it happens so quickly. In the video he spends a lot of time, and does a lot of crazy things, to answer the common question: Is it the amps or the volts that kill you? His conclusion is that its a combination of volts, amps, and TIME. You need enough voltage so that electricity can flow through you, that electricity needs to have enough amps to hurt you, and that electricity needs enough time to hurt you. I'd def recommend you, or anyone interested in electricity, lasers, etc to watch him and his videos.

@@gmadh8343 The voltage machine is safe, just don't plug it into one of those rectifiers!

Well you really should use an ion chamber with integrated-max dose rate. GM counters are not quick enough to really be effective for the short exposure time

Sadly tho it got cancelled....

@@THE_Game_Mental That's what happens if you don't make x-rays from scotch tape

It was done in an episode of Bones. Not scientifically accurate though...

Definitely a MacGyver/ Sheldon Cooper vibe to this episode. Is it even legal to make this? 😂 hope you were wearing lead pants 👍

And by MacGyver I hope you're mean the 1985 version. 😉

Very good points. I also wanted to point out that backscatter X-ray machines are an entire technology built on the principle of reflecting X-rays.

The Radiacode likely can detect them, mine was able to read the photopeak from Tritium Bremsstrahlung.

I'm kinda curious, does the mirror you use look any different than 'normal' mirorrs with bare eyes?

@@d0gkiller87 The multilayer mirrors, it depends on the materials used. Our problem was that the power involved in making the x-ray lasers pulse made such mirrors typically single use as they were destroyed after a single x-ray pulse. The x-ray grazing incidence mirrors look metallic. They were 1.2 meters long for an x-ray beam of about 3 mm high. It was made out of a single cristal of silicon with a coating of platinum. These typically take many months of design studies (optical behavior, mechanical behavior, thermal behavior of the cooling system while being exposed to very intense x-ray beam) before starting its production, and then the actual mirror production and testing takes another few months. Only few companies are able to produce these with the stringent specifications for x-ray mirrors. The actual mirror is rarely seen directly : once produced in a clean room, it is placed in the ultra high vacuum chamber connected to the synchrotron accelerator during the rest of its lifetime.

@@RMX7777 tritium beta is - from memory around 18 keV... which is way easier to detect. below 5 keV, you typically get a lot of your x-rays absorbed by air, detector windows etc... I used a few micron thick beryllium windows in front of a liquid nitrogen cooled SiLi spectrometer for spectroscopy, The spectrum you get out of your detector then needs to be corrected to deal for anything that may have absorbed the x-rays.

If my math is correct, 8000 uSv is the same as 8 mSv. Which is a huge dose.

@@kaylus9859 After an hour, yes. Applying that rate to the few seconds to maybe a minute that we saw isn't huge though. Going 100mph is fast, but if you only travel that fast for a few seconds, you haven't actually gone very far.

It's also important to note that alot of these X-rays are being emitted in the lower energy region, between 10 and 40 KeV. These X-rays are easily absorbed by the skin and will cause radiation burns, which doesn't happen with modern medical X-ray machines.

I warn students that the biggest radiation threat to themselves is getting too many medical X-Rays for checking up. Don’t think getting too many X-Ray checkups is good or safe for you.

​@@westonding8953 Unless you take dozens of x-rays per year, or is a kid,, you are more likely safer taking x-rays then unknowing what you have.

Old-timey x ray machine

I was more impressed that those wire leads could handle that much voltage. They "moved" a few times, which suggests to me the insulation may still be compromised.

@@plixplop Ye old ionizer

@@jovetj remember, amps remained low, so the high voltage is no issue

With a hand crank of all things

a DC 100KV power supply is many kilobucks ...but if you only want 30kv, then find lots of used $75 supplies online, like Spellman X3000 and CZE1000. Those are variable voltage, but only put out less than one mA. But if you go that way, then it's also time to buy lots of lead sheets and bricks!

@@mgancarzjrYes, when can I wind-up my smartphone? That would be real progress.

@@SubTroppo I can just imagine designing a 1950s zap gun enclosure and registering it with the BATF. "What kind of bullets does it shoot?" "X-Rays."

Not quite Styropyro, but I welcome the madness.

This is only one of the problems he's facing...

That dude cranks everything to 11.

the natural resistance of the body defeats the low volts, thats why 3V at 10KA wont kill you, but 1MV at 1mA will, and lightning will do you in super quick so extended time isnt a real factor there.

@@bunnykillerYou are partially correct, yes. I'm not sure what your point here was. Are you disagreeing with my comment? What I said is completely true. It is a combination of volts, amps, and time. A lightning strike, while fast, is not anywhere near as fast as a static shock. Also, the higher the voltage and amps are, the less time is needed for it to hurt you. So, yes, you would assume that a lightning strike would be FAR more capable of killing you compared to a static shock. A lighting strike deals anywhere between 200 megajoules and 7 gigajoules of energy. A static shock ranges anywhere from several hundred millijoules to several hundred joules. So, yes, the lightning strike isn't going to NEED a whole lot of time to kill you, and yet people do still survive even lightning strikes. The whole point here is that it is a myth that static shocks almost no amps, along with the fact that it is a combination of volts, amps, and time that kills you, not volts or amps on their own.

The current must flow through the heart to cause it to fibrillate and cause cardiac arrest. High frequency current only flows "skin depth" so isn't dangerous.

@@ryanjohnson3615 Yes he does, and I fckin LOVE it. That video he made when he was making his point that its not just amps that kills you was insane. He was letting so much power travel through his body, and putting himself at crazy risk, all just to prove a point. In the end though, nobody can argue against him.

Leaving my mark on the world.

should be the next iron man

that's not hard, the hard part is high-Q

Following video: how my interview with Homeland security went!

fission!! fusion is a myth

Have you not seen the backyard scientist?! lol he’s a mad lad.

William Osman made an X-Ray in his garage stacked on cardboard and bean tins

styropyro is the actual mad scientist here.

the thick lead glass in the front is there specifically to prevent the tube from blasting you with x-rays...large color screen tubes ran upwards of 60kV...

Old TV:s used to have x-ray warning labels on the back.

You could also create a short xray pulse by sparking the rectifier tube with a spark from a lighter.

@@mytube001 Yes. And their source was the HV rectifier tube - the exact type of tube our host is using.

Yes exactly. Or just buy used x-ray generator from medical devices

Yep, I expected a slight digression into that, but nope.

@@mytube001 I mean he did mention a blip at the end about how you can reflect xrays with very shallow angles.

@@Mike__B But those mirrors aren't your typical mirrors.

Yes you can, eventually. But for photography stuff you kinda want a scintillation screen with a piece of photo paper stuck to it. That's how many X-ray photos were made. The emulsion is always a bit Xray sensitive, but it's much more sensitive to the green light from the scintillation screen.

Do you think an alpha source scintillation medium would work as well?@@mfbfreak

i use film. i travel and send my film through the scanners at the airport. never had any issues.

Surprised it isn't mentioned!

That blinking was the detector's LED.

Or he may have lost his life attempting it.

8 mSv/h is plenty for testing though

With the filament hot, the Wimshurst generator would never have reached a useful voltage. You'd have to carefully regulate filament current to avoid this.

@@d.jensen5153I like the suggestion that Peter Terren (from the Tesladownunder website) had for this. Instead of wiring a vacuum tube directly to the voltage source you could charge a capacitor and then pulse it into the tube with a spark gap etc. It might be hard to get a reading of the output,though, since it would be short high intensity pulses.

He could have bought a vacuum tube specifically designed to produce x-rays off eBay if he wanted. A 1B3GT is a cheap HV rectifier often used as a flyback converter in 1940's -60's tv's that is usually shielded because it gives off x-rays. Somewhere on the inter webs I've seen a simple schematic to use one and an old car ignition coil to make an x-ray generator.

@@d.jensen5153Furthermore, this kind of tube is not designed for such high voltage, using it with a hot cathode would result in arc-over.

yeah no shit, this was posted in 2024

@@AmethistVisionFBthe joke went right over your head 😂

@@abroadjoel9478 WAS IT A JOKE, IM SO STUPID LOL

Many years ago, I had letters from a bank that when you opened them, they'd give off like a blueish glow as the gum separated. But only from that one bank though did I ever see that :-)

I have had nice glowy envelope glue lights too! Breaking sugarcubes may also emit light. Appearantly it's the nitrogen, same spectrum as in lightning.

@@mellertid Cheers

Nah, the electric resistance of a vacuum diode in reverse is just very high.

Also, resistance.

EUV lithography are using a wavelength that are well into x-rays, even if it is called UV. And they are using mirrors. They don't work as normal mirrors and are not reflecting all the x-rays.

I mean I'm pretty sure using a Xaser would constitute a war crime

@@lubricustheslippery5028it really depends on the wavelength/photon energy. A brief search online says that EUV uses about 13.5nm wavelength and the 20keV radiation used in the video is closer to 0.06nm.

@@deltab9768 according to wikipedia X-rays starts about 10nm so I was wrong, it's an border case

From the Wikipedia article, it's called a Wolter telescope, and consists of a combination of hyperbolic, and parabolic surfaces that bend the x-rays at shallow angles of less than 2 degrees. I don't think the problem is so much that it's hard to make these types of surfaces, but that x-rays are absorbed by the atmosphere, and ionize it. So you'd have a really limited range. That's why the only x-ray telescopes we have are in orbit.

No need to steal it - it's not expensive.

I agree, when I was experimenting with xrays electrostatics were a nightmare.

No it's not

where?

@@hiihay 0:08 probably

You could probably use Polaroid film to take x-ray pictures and develop them instantly. You might even be able to rig up the sensor used in medical or dental xrays. I wonder if light sensors from ordinary digital cameras also can detect xrays and produce a picture, with all lenses and filters removed.

Unfortunately both film and CCDs are very insensitive to x-rays. It would take a huge exposure to register an image. Medical radiographic equipment uses a “screen” next to the film or CCD which fluoresces when struck by x-rays, and most of the actual image production is from visible light.

Some guy named Roentgen did that already. Can't find his RU-vid channel, though.

You'd need to be in a nea-absolute vacuum. If an Astronaught did that, without a suit they'd be dead. Using it with a suit, it wouldn't bother them. The suit is already lined to reduce harmful solar radiation. The volume of Xrays cellotape produces in a vacuum is very small (photon count) and has low Kv energy so it's not very good at penetrating anything. Still, a cool concept.

you need particle to collide just not near the source. It wont produce in complete vacuum, right?

Would not save her. Modern radiation safety standarts are based on analysis of all those poor radiation victims.

@@heyhoe168Being able to count individual photons and measure their energy would still help greatly with identifying radioactive elements and isotopes. Forget the Curies, this detector would be a big improvement over the most state-of-the-art gamma detectors Oppenheimer and Fermi had.

Ps... THIS EXPERIMENT IS SO DANGEROUS LOL

Scatter lose momentum with distance and time. Much like the swinging bowling ball experiment, it will not have enough energy to bounce back that far. And X-rays don't bounce off metal surfaces. They go right thru. Even with lead, Xrays still go through if the strength is strong enough. The weaker more damaging photons get absorbed by lead and other surfaces such as concrete but the higher energy photons will still pass through, and if they pass through, they will pass through you with you relatively unharmed. Just ask your x-ray tech to take an image of an old school image receptor with it inverted. The image receptor is made of lead shielding on the back, but it will pass thru show the innards on the film if shot directly. After watching the video, he shows you in this video that it doesn't reflect and passes through behind the mirror instead. Exactly what I explained.

Scatter from a metal table? No. The animal on it however, yes.

It may be dangerous to the nurse who works 40 years constantly getting exposed to small amounts of xrays, but not when you just do a brief experiment. Keep in mind that the patients are actually blasted with a lot more x-rays and they're just fine because they're not doing it very often.

It's not at least where I live

​@@MEMEOMGwhere do you live? North Korea? This is simple off the shelf parts. It's a very cool experiment though

@@youtubehandlesareridiculous no.

@@MEMEOMG Answer the guy's question.

@@Oddo22 I'm not telling you my address u weirdo

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Go to sleep fool

Comments like that are why we have something I'm evidently not allowed to say on YT but is pronounced "youth-en-asia."

I wish the dislike button in the comments does something

@@MediumSizedBagel But that would be negativity, so _SMILE BECAUSE THIS IS A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT! SSSSSSMMMMMIIIIIILLLLEEEE!!!!!_

😂

You are confusing two different things. I have you two pieces of the same type of metal, perfectly smooth, and with nothing in between them (like the vacuum of space), they can form a permanent bond. This is called cold welding. If the tolerances are as small as possible, electrons can jump between the two similar metals, essentially turning it into a single piece in spots. I believe there are YT videos of this, if you search.

@@finkelmana I wasn't confusing 2 different things, I was talking about 2 completely different things that are related to almost perfect vacuums, ie. EVA missions in space. I admit I went off at a tangent, but I didn't say X rays were related to metals fusing together, I don't know why you got that idea. But anyway I knew about cold welding, but thanks for the information and the comment

​@@finkelmanavacuum isn't even necessary, I have a set of gauge blocks I had to replace because I left my two most commonly used sizes together for too long. Couldn't get them back apart, even cut them with a band saw to see what happened, looked like one piece to my eye. They need to have a high precision surface finish as well as some time, obviously without gas molecules to squeeze out it would be even faster.

@@grimlicentia That is interesting to read. You mentioned that it happens with metals that are the same. I imagine because they have the same electron configuration. Do you know perhaps if they HAVE to be the same metals or would it also work with 2 different metals that have the same number of electrons in the outer shell? Thanks for your previous reply anyway.