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X-ray images are best left to the professionals for good reason. While the tool is not dangerous when used correctly, its purpose is to fire radiation at a target. Knowing this, it’s probably best to just admire YouTuber Mirko Pavleski’s recent quest to build his own at-home X-ray machine from scratch. The secret ingredient to make everything work? A reused DY86 vacuum tube taken from an old CRT TV.
X-ray imaging is not only a vital tool for both medicine and science: it is one of the oldest methods of its kind. Discovered by German physics professor Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895, the breakthrough earned him the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics that same year. The machine shoots X-rays at a subject and then uses a specialized camera to record how a bone absorbs the rays based on its density. In the human body, thick bones absorb most of the X-rays and appear white in the resulting image. Softer tissues appear in various shades of gray, while empty spaces, such as the inside of the lungs, appear black.
DIY Miniature X-ray Machine with a Vacuum Tube for TV DY86
To power the homemade X-ray camera without blowing up the vacuum tube, Pavleski relied on a chain of power supplies. First, a low-voltage DC generator drives a high-voltage AC inverter, which then channels the current through a transformer and finally a voltage multiplier. This last part is crucial to creating a high enough voltage to ensure that the vacuum tube’s radiation emissions include X-rays. Unsurprisingly, this took a few tries to get right, resulting in three vacuum tubes exploding.
To create the photograph itself, Pavleski used standard dental X-ray film placed behind the subject of the image. Once activated, it completed the usual development process of wash, set, and rewash over the course of about 30 minutes. The final results offer looks inside several items from Pavleski’s workshop, including a microSD card and small transistors. The important caveat is the “elements” and not the body parts. After all, safety comes first.
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