[Grenadier] Wins The Laser Cutter For His Portable X-ray Project

January 13, 2012 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

The results of the Full Spectrum Laser contest over at Build Lounge have been announce. The top prize of a 40 watt deluxe laser cutter goes to [Grenadier] for the portable x-ray machine we saw at the beginning of the month. We think this is an excellent choice for top prize because, come on, this is pretty hard-core.

Taking second place was a Christmas light show choreographed to music. The open spaces of the University of Minnesota hosted the installation. We’ve embedded a video of the performance after the break.

Third prize went to the QC Co-lab Hackerspace for their light wall. It uses the ever popular GE Color Effects lights, with each bulb housed in a vacuum formed pyramid which acts as a diffuser.

There were also several honorable mentions. There’s a special place in our heart for [Jack Buffington’s] solar clock which was included in this group. We think the use of fiber optics to pipe the sunlight into a machined index ring is ingenious. And you’ve got to give him credit for developing a project that uses no electricity and almost no moving parts (there is a slider to adjust for daylight savings time).

Continue reading “[Grenadier] Wins The Laser Cutter For His Portable X-ray Project” →

See Through Everything With A Home Made X-ray

January 1, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 56 Comments

[Grenadier] built his very own x-ray machine. He’s no stranger to high voltage – we’ve seen his Jacob’s Ladders and Marx generators. Surely he can handle himself with high voltage and dangerous equipment. With this portable x-ray machine, [Grenadier] has begun overloading Geiger counters. We’re just happy he knows what he’s doing.

The key component of [Grenadier]’s portable x-ray machine is the Coolidge tube, a simple vacuum tube that produces x-rays with the help of 75 kilovolts of power. The finished build looks awesome. Two meters display the milliamps and kilovolts going to the x-ray tube, and a trio of nixies display the exposure time.

Even though [Grenadier] doesn’t have x-ray film, he can see through things with a scintillation screen that fluoresces when exposed to ionizing radiation. There are two pictures of the x-ray in action – one showing the inside of a pen and the guts of a hard drive (as shown in the title pic).

The output of the x-ray was measured with a Geiger counter. [Grenadier] was able to get a hit every second or so at 50 yards, and very loud white noise at 1 foot. Check out the video of [Grenadier]’s Buildlounge laser cutter contest submission after the break.

via Buildlounge

Continue reading “See Through Everything With A Home Made X-ray” →

Rapatronic Shutter; Snap A Pic Of An Atomic Bomb

January 20, 2011 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

We never really thought about it before, but this post about Rapatronic Shutters answers the question of how to photograph an atomic bomb detonation. The post includes an MIT video where [Charles Wyckoff] explains how he and [Harold Edgerton] developed the Rapatronic Camera. It is designed to snap a photograph based on zero time, marked by the X-ray transmission emanating from the bomb before it actually explodes. This pulse is picked up by a light sensor on a delay circuit, allowing for very precise exposure timing. Many of these cameras were used at the same time, all with slightly different delays so that the images could be viewed in order to show what happens during each stage of detonation.

[Thanks Petrus]