An American YouTuber and engineer currently living in Ventura County, California built his own X-ray machine after getting stuck with an expensive hospital bill. Even if it worked for this guy, we don’t recommend trying it at home, as radiation exposure can be dangerous.
It’s about Willam Osman, who after receiving a $69,210.32 hospital bill that included a round of antibiotics and an X-ray, went on a risky endeavor to build his own fully functional X-ray machine for less than the cost of his expenses. real doctors. Building the X-ray machine would have taken less than a day, though he says gathering materials for the project took a few months.
He explains that, thanks to his health insurance policy, he will only have to pay about $2,500, and that, when combined with the annual insurance costs, the total will be about $8,500. In a comedic sequence, he laments, “Now I’m a slave to medical debt. I have to sell all my stuff, I have to sell my friends’ belongings.”
As detailed in the video at just over 17 minutes, the hardest part of building the device was working on the energy-converting glass X-ray tube. But finally, Osman manages to build an X-ray machine, in his garage, powered by a $400 60,000-volt power supply, a $155 X-ray vacuum tube salvaged from a discarded dental X-ray head, several Geiger counters and a roll of lead sheet. “It’s the most dangerous contraption I’ve ever built.”
“I used a variable low-voltage power supply to drive the tube’s filament, which controls the amount of X-rays generated,” says Osman. “However, it’s hard to see X-rays, so a special sheet of material called an intensifying screen is used to convert the X-rays into visible light, and then these photons are captured by a DSLR camera that I chose for its extreme sensitivity to light.” the low light.
When it comes to safety, Osman is well aware of the dangers involved in building and using a device like this. X-rays are energy waves capable of passing through skin and bone; when a person receives x-rays, his body absorbs some of that radiation which, over time, can make someone susceptible to developing cancer in the future.
While he completed the build, Osman has taken the machine apart, as he only built it “for demonstration purposes” and has no intention of using it again. Well, maybe I’ll rethink it in case he gets another $69,000+ hospital bill.
It doesn’t hurt to dwell on the dangers of the project, so we don’t recommend trying this at home. A thorough understanding of radiation safety and radiation shielding materials is absolutely crucial, and since X-ray machines require a high-voltage power supply, the result could be deadly if mishandled. Osman is an expert on the subject, and in addition to having carried out the project successfully, he ends with an entertaining explanation through his YouTube channel.
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