Homemade x-ray tube - how i made it ☢

In this video i will show you the results of my homemade vacuum tube attempts. The greatest improvement is given by the use of a titanium getter pump to reach vacuum levels like in industrial x-ray tubes.

[CharlesVanNoland]

This was one of my dream projects when I was a kid. I was obsessed with X-rays and wanted to make an X-ray machine. It was so magical to me. Same with infrared night vision, radio waves and transmitters. Everything scientific was so amazing to me.

[teresashinkansen]

I have discovered that you can use activated charcoal to make a vacuum, later I learned about sorption pumps and reached a pretty good vacuum by cooling it even more with LN. That might complement well with your getter pump.

In my experiment I filled a borosilicate test tube with activated charcoal which I attached to a discharge tube like you did to yours with your getter pump, I used charcoal from a gas mask filter and used about the same volume as my discharge tube which was small about 50cm3 in volume, I heated it up with a blow torch as uniformly as possible until it stooped releasing steam then made a vacuum with a rotary vane pump and established a very faint discharge so the electrodes didn't overheated or sputtered too much. I kept heating the charcoal just before the glass begun to reach its annealing point so about 500C°, I keep it at that temperature for some minutes, then the most difficult part. I turned off the discharge then sealed the tube from the mechanical pump and stopped heating the charcoal to let it cool, then i turned on the discharge again. As it cooled it begun lowering even more the pressure, when it reached room temperature the discharge was like the one of a Crookes tube, then I cooled the charcoal tube with liquid nitrogen, the discharge completely stooped very fast it probably wasn't even at dry ice temperatures. I cannot measure vacuum below a couple of microns but ill say it might well be into the e-6 torr when the charcoal reaches LN temperature.

I will try your getter pump idea as well, maybe that will pull the ultimate vacuum well into the UHV if I bake well my tube and there is no leaks. Maybe finally I might make my own X-ray tube! making the anode is the hardest part. Sr. have you tried to make housekeeper glass to metal seals?

[Eliasdbr]

Awesome work! Also, I can feel the fear when I see the glow and hear the Geiger counter screech in the background

[THYZOID]

Please make a detailed video on how to build it!

[AllMiles]

Your presentation was very informative and intellectually stimulating. Thank you!

[KallePihlajasaari]

As you hoped, I loved the video. Especially loved the repurposing of commodity Pyrex glassware. Always hard to get small quantities of special glass stock for the hobbyist but lab-ware is more freely available from educational and second hand sources.

Look forward to any other process videos you decide to publish. Until one has the gear to practice in the physical world all examples that are available add to the knowledge base so many people watch videos and read books before lighting the first torch flame.

I was using an oxygen concentrator with a lamp working torch (glass bead enthusiasts do this often) to get high temperatures. When I get my workshop up again I will certainly try my hand at electrical feedthoroughs which are a special skill.

[tuopeeks]

Well constructed, very impressed with your glass to metal seals. I find it's difficult to get these reliable enough to hold a good vacuum long.

[borntobattery]

This is the most incredible YouTube science i have ever seen. Have done chemistry glass working with vacuum before, I know how incredible it is to seal multiple tungsten rods like this. Very well done.

Would love a follow up or even just a written description of the seals especially

[MisterTalkingMachine]

Fantastic, I wouldn't have imagined that a simple mechanical pump plus a getter would be good enough for a tube like this. I may be able to try it out in the future, maybe I'll use the cathode and glass pass-throughs from a fluorescent lamp, as they are readily fused and sealed.

[rob-muntron]

Great video! I remember trying to make gas discharge tubes from borosilicate glass in our science club in high school.. It's much trickier than it seems even to make a basic 2 electrode tube! I think I mainly failed when it came to making good glass-metal joints, as I was only using copper at the time.

[novanod]

This is awesome. Wish I had the stuff lying around to try this. I've been meaning to build an xray machine for a while now.

[AdvancedTinkering]

Great video! I really enjoyed watching it! The glass work you did with only an oxy propane torch looks very impressive.
I would be very interested to see a video about the power supply you are using.
Have you tried imaging something with this tube? You get X-ray intensifying screens on eBay for very little money. Just be careful with the radiation.
By the way, are you from Germany?

[charmio]

Holly shit! I have literally every single tool and raw material needed to do this in the garage!

I new my inability to throw away leftover material would pay off one day 😅

[AppliedCryogenics]

Often on Youtube, such projects look like rat nests, but this one is is beautiful! Excellent craftsmanship.

[christopherleubner]

Try making a focusing cup around the cathode, also a bit of TIG rod works well as the anode. Cut to about 23 degrees and have the angle parallel to the long axis of the filament. Low powered incandescent lamps work great as filament donors. Also baking out the tube, then backfilling the tube with a reactive gas mixture like oxygen then evacuating, then firing the getter with some modest HV on the anode relative to your getter will get an extremely deep vacuum in the tube. Titanium zirconium magnesium and aluminum all work well for getters. The lower melting ones like mg or al should be heated indirectly. Zirconium is the GOAT of getter materials. They use that in extreme reliability helium neon laser tubes like the ones for metrology or ring laser gyroscopes.❤

[ilmaramisepp]

What is the construction of the getter? How many amperes per square mm are needed to evaporate the titanium wire?

[dominikpi]

I absolutley love it, also im collecting materials and stuff to make my first tube, more videos plisss

[PosthumanKindergarten]

dammit!! making an X tube is one of my dreams!! i can barely melt hot glue, imagine working glass!!

anyways i made X with a trashy vacuum tube, fairly easy, it both triggers a geiger AND makes dots on a camera

[orsike]

please tell us you wore some protection my friend... take care of yourself. all in all very cool. gou done a neat job there, got to say 👏

[the.random_dude._.]

I was kinda able to reverse engineer the tube from the video but I was wondering what goes into the inert cilinder / cathode . It is just a metal 'cup" with the tungsten electrode as a filament or am I missing something