General > General Technical Chat
X-Ray Machine in USA (scenario)
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tpowell1830:
In the US, any items that are emitting noise, like radiation, coming from a house or a neighborhood where there are houses used to be monitored by the FCC, who, again, used to go around at regular intervals with a van full of monitoring equipment to see if there are any strange emissions coming from houses. The FDA regulates the sale of medical equipment, but the FCC looks for emissions, whether they are radio or simply electrical noise. I am sure there are more modern methods to monitor such emissions than a van, but a van would still be viable.

Hope this helps...
jogri:
I don't think that the NRC will bat an eye as long as you don't endanger others or brag about it on the internet... That being said, operating a DIY X-ray would be a rather stupid thing to do as shielding it would be quite a challenge. But if you publish videos about enriching uranium (or doing similar shenanigans) they will come to you (that happened to Cody from the YT channel CodysLab).

Btw, old MRIs pose no threat as the liquid helium (and nitrogen) used to create the superconductors has to be vented before it can be shipped. And even if they didn't vent it on purpose the helium will be gone in a few months as you have to refill it quite regulary, and no one is going to refill your DIY MRI with helium.


--- Quote ---What about a x-ray tube kit selling from "United Nuclear.com". They sell the X-ray tube* and 30kv supply that produces enough radiation to cause harm but that is perfectly legal. That company also got raided a few years ago by the NRC I believe. If they continue to sell x-ray kits it must be OK at some level.
--- End quote ---

They probably got away because they
a) technically sell you a vacuum tube that just "happens" to be particularly good at projecting an xray beam in one direction. No one can stop them from producing shitty vacuum tubes that need extreme voltages and just happen to have this design quirk

b)use rather low voltages and currents: their supply is rated for 25kV and >1mA while medical xray machines operate at 60-140kV (and up to 10+mAs). That's way softer radiation that doesn't penetrate as deep as the 140kV would. (CRTs here in germany can operate at 27kV max, just to set it in perspective)
DysonDepplbom:

--- Quote from: jogri on April 09, 2020, 04:05:56 pm ---I don't think that the NRC will bat an eye as long as you don't endanger others or brag about it on the internet... That being said, operating a DIY X-ray would be a rather stupid thing to do as shielding it would be quite a challenge. But if you publish videos about enriching uranium (or doing similar shenanigans) they will come to you (that happened to Cody from the YT channel CodysLab).

Btw, old MRIs pose no threat as the liquid helium (and nitrogen) used to create the superconductors has to be vented before it can be shipped. And even if they didn't vent it on purpose the helium will be gone in a few months as you have to refill it quite regulary, and no one is going to refill your DIY MRI with helium.


--- Quote ---What about a x-ray tube kit selling from "United Nuclear.com". They sell the X-ray tube* and 30kv supply that produces enough radiation to cause harm but that is perfectly legal. That company also got raided a few years ago by the NRC I believe. If they continue to sell x-ray kits it must be OK at some level.
--- End quote ---

They probably got away because they
a) technically sell you a vacuum tube that just "happens" to be particularly good at projecting an xray beam in one direction. No one can stop them from producing shitty vacuum tubes that need extreme voltages and just happen to have this design quirk

b)use rather low voltages and currents: their supply is rated for 25kV and >1mA while medical xray machines operate at 60-140kV (and up to 10+mAs). That's way softer radiation that doesn't penetrate as deep as the 140kV would. (CRTs here in germany can operate at 27kV max, just to set it in perspective)

--- End quote ---

Thanks for your reply. I'm gonna do more research into that YT channel situation. One of the reasons I started this post is because the YT channel "Applied Science" stopped posting stuff regarding x-rays and he hinted that it might be for security reasons but I cannot confirm that. He has posted really interesting info regarding the building of a DIY backscatter imaging device. I was also curious regarding the other YT creators that have been shown using medical x-tubes and devices.

Ben from Applied Science said a viewer/supporter might come out and "certify" his setup. Whatever that means.

Thanks for the MIR information. I find them interesting but don't know much about them. I saw three weeks ago a MIR machine with "warm magnet" was not selling on ebay about three weeks ago. It was pick up only and the seller didn't have any bids at $1000.
jogri:

--- Quote from: DysonDepplbom on April 09, 2020, 04:16:51 pm ---Thanks for the MIR information. I find them interesting but don't know much about them. I saw three weeks ago a MIR machine with "warm magnet" was not selling on ebay about three weeks ago. It was pick up only and the seller didn't have any bids at $1000.

--- End quote ---

"Warm magnet" is probably a synonym for "we f**ed up and someone activated the emergency quench". No wonder that this didn't sell as the emergency quench just opens a valve connecting the liquid helium tank to the outside-> pressurized helium gets released->temperature rises as helium level drops->the current (>10A) still circling inside the magnetic ring suddenly encounters conductors with a finite resistance-> Ohms law kicks in->conductor gets hot->helium and nitrogen boil off explosively->fun times.

Chances are that you have to get new magnets as they probably got damaged whenever you punched that emergency quench button (remember: the conductors do not have an electrical resistance so the diameter of said conductor can be rather small as it will never heat up due to the current [except when you quench it]->small conductors do not react well to extreme currents).

Btw, that is the reason why MRIs have two seperate emergency shutdown switches:
One that will just kill the power, but leaves the magnets running->normal safety switch
One that will quench the magnet and therefore make sure that the magnetic field collapses->only for MAJOR fuck-ups as the cleanup is rather costly

Here is a video where they quenched an old MRI magnet:


One a sidenote: MRIs aren't actually the machines with the most powerfull superconducting magnets out there, that honour goes to NMR spectrometers: Those reach up to 24T while MRIs "only" go up to 7T. But that's not really a fair comparison as NMR spectrometers can only fit 5mm wide test tubes while an MRI can fit a person.
Sal Ammoniac:

--- Quote from: Bicurico on April 09, 2020, 01:30:48 pm ---If I knew my neighbour had such a machine, I would immediatly file a complaint at my condominium adminstration and to the local police station.
--- End quote ---

Sure, if you live in a condominium you probably wouldn't want your neighbor operating an X-Ray machine. But how about my case? I live on 4 hectares and my only neighbor is 250 meters away. Should I be allowed to operate an X-Ray machine on my property for hobby purposes?

Laws try to be one-size-fits-all, but that's not how things always work out in the real world.
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