I had one of those and I mostly played Bejeweled on it... they got popular before there was affordable mobile internet....same with my Nokia Communicator- the coolest device on this planet- that I had absolute no use for besides of playing doom that I had to transfer over the IR port...anybody remember that fiddly shit?
@@olik136 Heh! I killed easily a half dozen Palm-series screens playing bejeweled. I have one working device left, which I still trust for password management. Not getting anything off of that without physical access! But that's another topic. :)
Can confirm. Working for a company that does a lot of UPS shipping, UPS is pretty good at depositing mechanical energy in substrates. Though for more consistent energy deposition and higher total energy deposited, I've found FedEx to be superior.
Can these units also analyse saturated liquids? That company effectively refused to sell you a device that would have resulted in over 100,000 targeted adverts for their x-ray product.
Sure but they didn't want their low quality made in China crap exposed or they'd lose business because no one would take a gamble on it. There is so much technology off the market now because China makes it cheaper, yet the bottom line is the Chinese versions don't work, or don't work for long. And now all the companies that once made it are bankrupt and half the men who mastered it are dead. We've destroyed so much technology by buying cheap crap. And by allowing globalist market economics to destroy industry. Don't get me wrong I'm not a protectionist in any extreme, but China has done more harm than any other country on Earth to our R&D as a species. I ONLY buy things made in Europe and her colonies or the USA. I'd rather pay ten times the price and get something that my grandchild can use than something that won't work or will be dead in a week. I've legit purchased tools from China in the past and opened them only to have to repair them out the box, the most common is they sabotage them with oil grease FILLED with iron filings, I suspect it's thrown away from old machines, but every power tool from China today has that black gunk in it. I suspect that to make it that cheap they need ongoing sales and thus need to ensure their products are one use only.
In college in the early 2000's I worked on a project using an XRF gun with some fancy software running on the PDA that would process and decode chemical barcodes. By mixing certain compounds in various ratios we could create decodable messages (complete with checksums). The project was working on using it for high security applications. Our proof of concept used some pretty heavy excel workbooks and lots of copy and pasting, but it worked!
@@skipfred Ha. I would love to take credit for the tech, but I didn't develop it. It was on loan to us from a commercial org that appears to no longer be in business. I attended Ohio University and we had the "Center for Auto-ID" which did research into auto-id technologies such as barcodes, RFID, biometric ID, etc. I worked for the center as a student work/study type position testing different technologies. The XRF project was briefly put on hold twice, first when a professor outside my department found me in a lab with vials of chemicals that I didn't have all the MSDSs for, and the second time when I lost my dosimeter badge (which given the amount of radiation this outputs, was a little silly)... I worked on another project, that I haven't looked for out in the wild, but I found just as interesting. Imagine having a CCD sensor, that rather than detecting light, it was a 2D sensor array that detected magnetism (on contact). A standard dot-peen style datamatrix barcode could be marked into a part, we would fill the holes with a magnetic putty and paint over it. The reader could see the dot matrix through the paint, and we effectively had a completely hidden barcode. It was also cool to look at things like the stripes on your credit card with the imager - it looked very much like a traditional 1D barcode.
@@timeremapperegor1249 While true I suppose, I don't think a NFC device is nearly as hidden as say a coating or ingredient with a specific chemical signature. Ostensibly you could barcode a bar of gold, an entire batch of some super high end aerospace metal, money for counterfeit protection, etc, potentially in a completely indelible way. Pretty neat applications that NFC wouldn't begin to help with.
That bit at the end made me remember when I was a kid I got in trouble for wasting a whole box of band-aids. I discovered that if you opened the individual wrapping on the bandages in the dark, it would emit a glow so naturally I did it with all of them.
Didn't your parents know that this is how science work, experiments have to be repeated to make sure it's not a coincidence I guess they don't thought you're doing a scientific experiment and just making a mess like usual 😀
I was in the Navy a few decades ago and found when removing dress whites in the dark they would glow where they made contact with my skin as I removed them.
@@Marci124 Just thought about that as I read your comment. It's funny because, I was thinking it's process was random, but then that doesn't work... The answer was right there the whole time. 😂
So do smoke alarms if you listen to the EM as is, without interpreting it as a commercial radio (for music etc…) would. RayGun sound :) And lightning is like eating crisps.
The detector is likely either a Si-PIN photodiode, or if it's a more recent(/expensive) unit, it's an SDD - silicon drift detector. Beryllium window, multi-stage peltier cooled stack construction.
@TheNeatWhale No, SiLi detectors are not and have never been made in such tiny cans. They also have basically no resolution above ~200K, which would be very difficult to achieve here. The closest that has ever been commercially available was the Kevex PSi, and that didn't last long on the market. Not to mention it was about the size of this entire handheld unit.
Back in the early 90's I was doing my MS in Physics. A company had provided funding to my university (so they didn't have to get a license from the NRC) to build a prototype very similar to this. The differences were that 1) we were using Co-57 as a source of gamma rays to excite the x-rays within the sample, 2) we were specifically looking for only Lead (to detect Lead paint in housing projects), and 3) we were using low resolution (cheap) NaI scintillator crystal attached to a photomultiplier tube as the detector. I earned my MS from that project, but the company funding the research had problems of one sort or another and never ended up producing an actual product.
The best thing about this channel is that you don't treat you audience like they're idiots who don't know anything about science. It's so incredibly refreshing! Keep it up!
UV fluorescence is actually a bit of as different process than X-ray fluorescence. When a fluorescent material absorbs a photon with a specific energy, an electron within its outermost orbital is excited. Rather than being ejected and leaving the system entirely, the electron jumps from its current orbital to a higher energy one, with the energy difference between the orbitals corresponding to the energy of the photon absorbed. The electron can then relax back down to its original state by releasing a photon--this is light you seen when shining a UV light on a fluorescent object. Now, there often is not perfect overlap between the lower energy orbital and the higher energy one, so when a photon is absorbed and an electronic transition occurs, the molecule can become vibrationally excited as well. The energy used in the vibrational excitation is "wasted" and does not contribute to the energy of the photon emitted. This is why fluorescence produces light that is lower in energy (longer in wavelength, or "redshifted") than the light that causes the initial excitation. Hope this makes sense!
@@DudemcmanStudios my thought is Evan's explanation is correct: the collapse of an excited electron down to a lower orbital emits a photon at an energy level reduced by loss. The energy of the exiting photon determines the wavelength. If exiting photos "returned" all energy of incoming UV...zero loss...the wavelength would be UV, but in reality the greater the loss through absorption by the parent atom the lower the energy of the exiting photon and hence the longer the wavelength from Uv down through the spectrum from violet through red and beyond.
I worked at a company that made a competitive product to this. Brings back memories watching this teardown. The high voltage power supply is very straight forward and unique. Its a resonant design. We potted our power supplies.
Interesting! In the video I see very long voltage multiplier. How many cascades are in it? From what circuit block is it powered? Is it a transformer or simply coil? Thanks for answers!
What's unbelievable is how clearly you convey very complex subject matter! If (most) junior/middle/high school physics/chemistry classes weren't simply just talked at, such as: "if you do this, this happens;" but rather shown and invited to participate in demonstrations or experiments with such clear explanations and education as to the reasons WHY - as you provide - we (humans) would be better off.
That silver piece at 13:35 is probably a monochromator crystal. Only certain x-rays with correct wavelength will scatter in the direction of the opening. Love the video!
Thank you, and especially for mentioning the triboelectric effect. My first experience with a triboelectric charge occurred in the photo darkroom when I would unroll my 120 roll film in total darkness; when I pulled the adhesive tape holding the film to the spool to remove the film, I would see a faint bluish glow in the darkness where the adhesive was separating from the film. My friends and I thought this was so cool that we made other experiments with adhesive tape and substrates from which we would pull the tape and watch the effects. This also made a very interesting fog exposure on the film, and after it was developed and fixed, we could see the triboelectric light exposure that the effect made on the film. Thanks again!
I owned a dental X-ray machine rebuilding company for 20 years until I sold it in 2017. During that time period, I have repaired many different types of X-ray tube heads, and as a result I have learned about the different types of high voltage power supplies that were designed into those tube heads. With only a couple of exceptions, most X-ray heads employ a split DC power supply. That is, the X-ray tube normally needs between 70 KV and 90 KV depending on the type of tube head, and because of the relatively small space inside the metal enclosure, the manufacturers would split the HV supply into two separate sections. One section would feed -35KV to the cathode, and the other section would feed +35KV to the anode (in a 70KV tube head). I would have guessed that that's the way the XRF guns were designed, but according to your finding, Ben, it appears that they use a single-ended HV supply. By the way, some dental X-ray tubes have a thin Beryllium disc pressed into the circular window in the copper hood that surrounds the tungsten anode. Beryllium is nearly transparent to the X-ray spectrum that is produced by dental tube heads, and I'm guessing that might be the type of metal that you found in that XRF gun (rather than silver). But having Zero experience with those guns, I am just guessing about that. Fascinating video, Ben!
Yup that beryllium window has a very critical purpose. It stops the secondary electrons from bombarding the glass, causing a blurry image. It also allows for a uniform electrical field that prevents an asymmetry of the x ray emission fields.
Due to the geometry of the silver bit I suspect that it does not excites the silver to than let the silver emit x-rays, but that the silver does bragg refelction to filter out unwanted frequencies. This is the way you would do it to prepare your beam for an diffractometer or in Wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to get only one frequency (at a time). X-ray fluorescence can can lead you into rabbit holes if you use the wrong program for interpret the data. There are programs for use with alloy identification wich work fine for that purpose. But if you use them with things like minerals they might tell you some wrong numbers since some peaks are close together and the program rules one out because that element is not used in alloys and gives you the other.
It is just a beryllium window and not silver. Beryllium is almost "transparent" for x-rays and thus not disturbs the measurement. No Bragg reflection is used in this kind of handheld XRF guns.
@@wvdh There's another comment thread on here (close to the top) where someone said they made these devices. According to them the window on the detector itself is in fact Beryllium.
Yes! In fact, I tried the gun on the photochromic sample, but it didn't return a result. I believe the concentration of silver is just too low to be detected. Another challenge is that the glass recipe includes information that is very difficult to recover from even a perfect chemical analysis of the final result. Most of the starting ingredients will be decomposed, oxidized, or reduced in the glassmaking process, so knowing times, temperatures and kiln atmosphere composition are critical.
I actually had almost the same (but black) HP iPAQ PDA. I was incredibly proud of it. It also used to run so hot that I used it as a hand warmer in winter, very convenient to use outside.
I used an XRF for in field soil analysis a few years back. Later had a reason to use it again and my company acted like I was preparing to tickle the dragons tail with the thing. As shown here it’s relatively safe as long as you’re not consistently shooting yourself in the face or junk, and keep it pointed away from you. Very useful tool.
The abundance of frivolous lawsuit filing individuals in today's world are most likely to blame for your company's weariness to lend it to you. And possibly the exorbitant price of the instrument itself played a part in it also.. 🤷🏻
When I was in high school many years ago I did a lot of photography and dark room work. One thing I noticed is that at the end of a roll of 120 film (2 1/4" x 2 1/4") there was some tape holding the end of the film strip to the plastic reel. When I pulled the tape off the film there would always be a green flash of light right where the tape was separating from the film. It never ruined any images as film is unwound and loaded into a stainless steel reel and then into the developing tank and the lid goes on before the lights are switched on, that is, the film is loaded in complete darkness so the tape glow was the only light in the room.
It probably is beryllium, which you can't detect with this apparatus and that is exactly why it is used. I you use a metal that you can detect it will absorb a lot of the radiation, and you always get a measurement of that metal in your result.
@@wvdh No I think its silver indeed but i doubt Ben's hypothesis not so much as a fluorescent "monochromator" but more like a filter. Medical x-ray machines have aluminium filters so the beam has less low energy photons which increase your dose without contributing to make a radiography, so I guess its similar but silver being of a higher atomic number it can be much thinner and only let pass the highest energy photons.
@@teresashinkansen9402 There is no reason to lower the dose on a metal sample. And you lower the output of your x-rays a lot by filtering, especially for lower energy x-rays, which is what you are using here. Titanium Ka energies are around 4.5keV, so anything above that can contribute to the signal.
Positive material identification, what a wonder that has been to the engineering field. Discarding a few tons of low-alloy steel because you lost the MTRs is one thing, but when you get into the ritzy stuff one of these starts to look like a very good deal.
Ore/material supplies have been known to put a layer of good stuff over the top of rubbish. So now the testers dig DEEP and test the core/base of samples. :D
I believe one of the uses for these devices is to see that the king pin that holds your air line jet engine to the wing is not counterfeit, apparently a lot of bad stuff is around, scary thougth!
@@jimmiller5891 If people only knew what goes on behind the scenes of things we take for granted as being 'safe'.... Luck plays a larger role in your life than you think it does!
The topology of the HV supply is very intriguing, I'm curious of the drive waveform and frequency. The negative supply is common in these industrial use x-ray tubes...
The day will come where we will have thousands and thousand of Bens doing there little thing on the internet out of curiosity. What a wonderful time that will be.
We have the much newer 8000 model where I work. It can read elements from magnesium onwards. It's used for verification of aerospace materials, however some of the guys in the shop will bring in rock for us to check for anything of value. Really impressive piece of tech.
I once helped an engineer install the software for an XRF gun on his computer. I got to talking to him about it and must have proven myself nerdy enough because he proceeded to give me a full demo. We went around the room sampling doorknobs, a metal grounding plate, a PCI card connector (with some difficulty), and then a steal filing cabinet. The cabinet read as mostly titanium. Because it was painted white. I forget what model it was but I remember I could have bought my car (at the time) about 40 times over or one of them.
Many thanks for the teardown. Although I come across these analysers regularly at work, principally for Alloy Verification of CRA pipes, I have learnt two new things. 1. Why carbon content analysis is so unreliable. 2. Why they talk about tertiary X-rays in conjunction with this method of chemical analysis.
Your story reminds me of watching the Wired Documentary on Shenzen China where they talk about open source and how everybody everywhere else is is all "OMG how do you protect your IP and make money?" but in Shenzen their reply is "Whats new? This is how we make money now". We have definitely reached a point where patents and the protectionist ideas that they encompass are a hindrance to progress rather than a driver of it.
You do not explain how the returning X-rays are analyzed for their spectral content. Is there a crystal that diffracts the rays? if so, how are the angles of diffraction measured?
It amazes me the things people take for granted. This is an amazing tool. I haven’t the slightest idea about the majority of what you said, other than my limited memory of high school science classes, but these are some of my favorite things to watch. Like modern marvels or how it’s made... Great way of explanation.
Actually I believe one of my neighboring fire departments has a similar tool on one of their hazmat units. I remember them showing us something very similar at a training last year.
i remember hearing about the scotch tape/glass x-ray discovery years back, glad to hear that it was actually applied for practical purpose just too bad we couldnt get a tear down of mechanism.
From what I see of the feedback circuit, it is using a similar set up that is used in substations for high voltage power distribution where you use a coil that is coupled magnetically to the high voltage line and is then stepped down for instrumentation. I am not an electrical engineer, but I was an industrial electrician and my instrumentation training included power grid and high voltage applications, but more of what you would see in power distribution or for use in an industrial plant, like what is used in some electrochemistry based processes.
You should have gone full meta and used the functional XRF gun to measure the composition of the metal plate on the emitter of your non-functional XRF gun!
I've been looking at ways I can afford to get an XRF gun to identify elements in ores I've been extracting elements from. I've been wanting to limit my exposure to arsenic from minerals I process and knowing how much is present would help me determine which chemicals or the quantity of chemical ratios to use in avoiding the creation of soluble arsenic salts. Plus it would be nice to not have to assay material to determine how much gold, silver, platinum, copper, etc is present in these ore bodies.
A current wish of mine is to make techniques like this and spectroscopy more accessible to the public. Would make it so much easier to see the elements interacting in everyday life
How do you do that! You explain complex things in a manner that an idiot like me can understand. X-ray theory was a 2 moth topic in school covering diffraction and fluorescence. Honestly was more confused at the end of the course than before I started. 2 minutes of explanation from you and its all very clear to me now. Thank you.
I watch these videos every night in order to fall asleep, idk if this dude’s voice bores me to sleep or if it relaxes me to sleep 🤷🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️ honestly no idea but either way THANK YOU!!!!
damn i've been looking for one of these for years for a decent price, and now that you've made a video on them my chances have gone from slim to none. ah well. at least it's a good video.
@Milo Godeke you underestimate it. it won't affect the prices so much for this particular item, but it will mean a lot more people are looking for cheap ones to pop up, which they occasionally do.
I've build low energy XRF for measuring aluminium and silicon (1.5keV/1.74keV) the xray source was Fe55 (5.9keV), it was done in helium to reduce the reduce attenuation of air, and the signal from Argon (~3keV) . The sensor was a bare CCD, the image processed to make histogram of values of pixels with empty neighbours(iow where all the energy of the photon was in a single pixel) . Most common sensors are just one detector and pulse processing and use a beryllium window a few um thick
The sensor in a case with metal film cover is from Amptek. Either a SiPIN or SDD sensing device. There is a built-in two-stage peltier cooler to drop the sense-element temperature and cut down significantly on thermal noise interference at low x-ray energies. The can is also evacuated and the cover metal/filter is most likely element "Be". Very thin prone to leakage - handle very carefully. You can replace x-ray tube and power supply use Cs140 radio isotope. It puts out a nice single peak at 88kev. There will be some silver peak interference also but low cost online for about $130. I have experimented a bunch using the Amptek mca + shaper + sensor and their software. Quite a bit has also been done thru the Theremino website using Am241 source and lex gamma detector or proportional counter tube.
1:20 These type of machines can give dose rates at the exit window in the order of tens of SIEVERTS per hour. Sievert, that is, not milli- or microsieverts. Your detector is absolutely not sensitive to the energy range of your XRF and therefore you wrongfully conclude that it doesn't emit much radiation. I sincerely hope that you don't have any radiation check samples that come even close to these dose rates (or even 4-5 orders of magnitude less) . With dose rates like these you can get over the skin dose limit in a minute or so (for occupational exposure: 500 mSv in a year) or a few seconds (50mSv for public)
Geiger counters suck ass at X-day detection when it originates in a 40kV tube in my experience. They are just not designed for this job, it seems. I agree that the measurement was misleading. This may be 7uA at 40kV, but say a dental X-ray may be 60kV at 8mA and exposure time is in tens of milliseconds. 10 seconds at 7uA is probably an exposure similar to a dental X-ray, or at least within 10x ballpark as far as energy delivered. Don’t point that thing at people, for sure, and don’t run it unshielded without a dosimeter that X-ray techs use. You’ve got one chance to goof up, so better be safe than sorry, AS!
Also take into account that this is an almost unfiltered x-ray spectrum, so the dose /µa will be much higher. The figures I used in my first post do assume a more powerful XRF (50kV ~100µA), so this might be a bit less dangerous, but we're still talking about minutes of use to get significant doses.
Ive experimented with far worse... the scariest was a Dynarad battlefield x ray unit. It made a visible dim blue cone of light in the air at full power and buried the needle on the higest range on a cdv 715. Promptly got turned off and put in the box... Absorbed a few mR testing that one to be sure.😲😵😵😵
@@christopherleubner6633 Hard to believe that you saw ionization of the air, you probably just saw the light field of the x-ray unit used for positioning. The tube efficiency is kind of similar for al medical x-ray tubes when taking into account the tube current and tube voltage, and you don't see that effect with much higher tube currents, so it's impossible to see that with a portable x-ray unit. Accordign to wikipedia the CDV-715 has a maximum range of 500 R/h or roughly 5 Sv/h, which is around the correct order of magnitude for the dose rate in the direct x-ray beam.
At one time I worked alongside a guy whose previous job had been testing or tuning a metal alloy composition analyzer. But unlike this X-ray device, it analyzed the sparks resulting from a grinding operation. All optical spectrum. The development job entailed selecting the grinding wheel material and subtracting its contribution to the spark colors. Also, selecting the optimal grinding force and several other details. I believe they were using photo multiplier tubes (more than one) with various filters.
You can actually see the charge of the tape being unrolled when you're in the dark. I think i tried it with either brown tape (tessa) or paper tape (no brand,standard large,wide).
@@m.k.8158 Oh I wasn't worried at all. My ex was an X-ray tech (ex-ray) and I read her textbooks. "How was work today?" "Another day of squishing and filming boobs."
I'm an undergraduate astrophysics major working on soft x-ray band detection with CMOS technology and lemme say, I can't blame them for not seeing those darn oxygen lines. Took us a year of refining the algorithm and dozens of hours of data collection just to see the oxygen line of illuminated teflon
Cool; there are two manufacturers of the x-ray detector diodes; Moxtek (Utah) and Ampek. Moxtek made the x-ray source modules and detector modules for the ThermoFisher XRF guns. They were about $25k each when they first came out, but really useful for aerospace material checks and almost anything else. These are 'soft' xray's, so you can see up to about 50kEv energies. The photodiodes used even when cooled with Peltier devices have thermal noise that limits resolution of around 150 to 170eV. I wrote code for the XRF spectrometer (Moxtek later released) for a DSP chip. It's fun to play with atoms. Careful where you point that thing... anything the x-rays hit flouresce which is not good for DNA...
Patented technology - but not wanting to share the technical details of the implementation. What part of the patent process is broken? I guess the whole thing. The patent does not describe the technical details and the patent is worthless without the money to sue a competitor.
I think nothing is broken here. Patents are there not to help others make the thing or understand how it works. Patents are a legal tool to establish a monopoly, and are intentionally written to be as general as possible. As far as i understand it, at least.
@@victortitov1740 Patents are an exchange. The inventor is opening his invention in exchange for a time limited monopoly. Patents are _literally_ there for others to understand the invention. They are written "as generally as possible" in order to have "ground to loose" to prevent circumvention by trivial alternation. Patents to not establish a monopoly - you competition can still steal your design. The patent holder would have to sue the infringer. That will cost a lot of money. The infringing party then can drag out the process, call on expert witnesses, drag out the process ... and in the end the inventor ends up with one or two instances won, but the case hanging in revision in the next instance, where the inventor is out of money to fill motions, so the case ends in a default judgment.
In a way you're right but what's the alternative? Not disclosing your invention, then someone open your product copy your design and what you got? nothing. At very least with a patent you got something to hold on to.
I rocked 3 generations of Clie's. I loved them. I sorta miss those days where we had dedicated devices to walk around with: My phone, my PDA, mp3 player/CD player, my notebook, my calendar/planner, my computer, wallet, atm card, watch, my camera... Wait. No I don't.
Fascinating! I've always wondered how these work. I'll now have to search around and see if more modern iterations can detect lighter elements. Your channel is ace. Thank you so much!
I wish I had a time machine to show this to Moseley. I bet he would flip the f out. Love that calcite phosphorescence and the fact that you can "see" the manganese creating it! The little angled output aperture is intriguing. I don't know if it's silver in there, I bet there's actually a rubidium hydrogen phthalate (RbAP) crystal monochromator in there using Bragg diffraction off the crystal planes to select a single wavelength output. In any case, it also wouldn't surprise me to find a beryllium foil for the output aperture or detector window so careful w/that too....
These small handheld XRF guns don't use Bragg diffraction, bigger table sized XRF apparatuses do use the configuration with the Bragg diffraction. And the "silver" is indeed a beryllium window.
the metal-window in front of the xray tube acts a xray filter to block the part of the spectrum below the K-alpha peak of the anode (i.e. the target) (edit: no, that was wrong. the filter blocks everything
I have always wanted one of these so I can figure out what all the scrap metal in my "to use someday" pile is. People always say to just take it to a scrap yard with a 6 pack of beer, but so far I have yet to find a scrap yard where that works.
I called a business-to-business scrap yard and the foreperson was happy to measure a meteorite, after first swinging it through the vehicle radiation detection gate. Probably wouldn't have been interested in random scrap metal.
The negative voltage on the tube is the same way my watch works. This let me use very tiny dual p-channel mosfets at logic level on the segment and digit controls which really helped. It's interesting to see that kind of technique used elsewhere.
I've seen an electrostatically deflected CRT where the anode is supplied with 2500v and the cathode -2500v, This was done so that the deflection circuitry could be close to chassis potential. This of course required the heater to be supplied by its own isolated transformer winding.
Great videos, great content. Intelligent and enjoyable. I always look forward to you doing the next 'impossible' thing ("let's build an electron microscope!" Me - mouth open in disbelief as he actually makes a home made electron microscope). However, on the specific subject of hand held X-ray guns... Personally, I wouldn't trust those hand held guns down to 0.01%. You would be hard pushed to get that kind of elemental sensitivity and repeatability from a quarter million pound (£) 30Kv, wavelength dispersive laboratory grade instrument with certified calibration standards. Even at modest masses (first transition series metals) there is the chance of interference from overlapping lines because the resolution of the detector is not that good. The problem gets worse as you move up the periodic table. Portable X-ray guns are brilliant at discriminating between elements and different alloys, but everything is a compromise. You can't take a half tonne, lab grade XRF on the passenger seat of your car and set it up in a couple of minutes in a warehouse on an industrial estate. For that kind of work, hand held is difficult to beat. But 0.01% precision is unrealistic. The manufacturers can put two decimals on the readout, but almost all of the time that last digit is just noise. Now, if you want real elemental discrimination, how about building an ICP-MS? (!!!)
You presumed that the audience would understand why the end had to be negative 40k volts. (I presume it's because electrons are negatively charged and by having them generated at the negative end they will be accelerated towards the {relatively positive } zero charge end.) But the tube is creating x-rays, so there must be a conversion from electrons to x-rays. Does that conversion create scattering or is it linear?
How does the device give you a percentage concentration of each element? For example, at 11:08, it says there is 0.22% Manganese, but doesn't give any other figures of other elements. Doesn't it have to detect all the other elements in the substance in order to give a percentage concentration for any of them?
Me: DevOps Technical lead/principal at tech company thinking I’m smart creating a bridge rectifier power supply as a hobby. I then watch these videos which include everything from chemistry, physics, assembly code, programming, circuit design... to name a few. What a small fish I am.
I actually found some samples of that special calcite in an abandoned gold mine up in Canada. I was playing around with a laser pointer one day, and accidentally discovered that strange phosphorescent property. I talked to several geologists, and I scoured the internet at the time trying to find out what it was. But I was told by the geologists that it wasn't phosphorescent, because their UV light didn't activate it. They also didn't view my laser as a "significant UV source", so I didn't even bother with them.... I was able to work out that it was some kind of mineral that was activated or "doped" with an element. Similarly to radioluminescent doped zinc sulfide. I never would have guessed that it was manganese doing the work though, of all things. Fascinating!
@@willyou2199 My brother once told me that Toyota bought a minivan, back when the minivan was a new fad, took the car apart completely in a gymnasium to study it.
Nice job. More tear downs would be welcome. I figured you might explain the noise? Is it the speaker in the tablet as a warning or is it the high voltage power supply?
using a spinning wheel with a rod connected on the side like on train wheels to produce a linear force (what are these called?) you could make some thing symaler to what he described using two metal plates and a silicone pad, you could generate some X rays. i wonder how well this scales?
Nice video. Regarding the difference with uv fluorescence, x ray fluorescence is triggered by a ionization process while uv fluorescence is due to an electron transition from an exited state to a ground state. So they are not easily comparable as you show.
I would like more information on how the detector works and separates the different X ray energy levels in the return signal. How is the signal processed?
You know who first worked on and with those devices? The soviets, it was mainly used to control welding spots, but they improved this technology a lot and as the first ones for nuclear reactors piping control.
Yup they are spendy gadgets. Most of the trouble is getting the narrow band x ray energy. Needs to be a single color for lack of better description. The silver window thingie is the monocrome k edge filter that pases only the 40kv band.
The above machine solves a mystery I had been pondering for ages. A friend of mine knows a firm into jewellery and has a machine where you get a readout of all the different metals in the sample. Perhaps they deal in second hand gold and silver and need to know the purity. Anyway, chap says, put this silver bracelet in I bought from India. He's really fond of it, but out came the analysis and it was found to contain large quantities of cadmium.
@@Spirit532 I'm not certain what you mean by the words "from the x-ray tube's point of view". The tube is the whole device containing the voltages in question. It seems sensible to say "from the electron's perspective" or "from the coil's perspective", but "from the tube's point of view" seems a bit non-technical of a starting point.
I am able to get negative voltage from an AA battery if I flip the leads of my multimeter. From an LED's perspective does it behave differently if you measure the voltage that way?
I work at a synchrotron facility and we usually use Beryllium as windows to let X-rays out of vacuum chambers with very little attenuation since it is the metal with the smallest atom. They might be using the same here in which case you have to be careful since Beryllium is toxic. So there is that. BTW. I love all your videos :)
The secret ingredient is an HP iPAQ from 2004.
This has to be by far the best use that I've seen for any "PDA".
@@mlentsch We used to have those to install HP graphic calculator emulators... because of the hardware, it ran faster than the originals
@@mlentsch Changing the tv channel in a bar in a foreign country with the built in remote is a way better use.
I had one of those and I mostly played Bejeweled on it... they got popular before there was affordable mobile internet....same with my Nokia Communicator- the coolest device on this planet- that I had absolute no use for besides of playing doom that I had to transfer over the IR port...anybody remember that fiddly shit?
@@olik136 Heh! I killed easily a half dozen Palm-series screens playing bejeweled. I have one working device left, which I still trust for password management. Not getting anything off of that without physical access! But that's another topic. :)
UPS is very good at accidental "mechanical energy input"
I was about to say that "mechanical energy input" was a novel way of describing dropping something to me.
Can confirm. Working for a company that does a lot of UPS shipping, UPS is pretty good at depositing mechanical energy in substrates. Though for more consistent energy deposition and higher total energy deposited, I've found FedEx to be superior.
This phrase goes straight into my Golden collection of t-shirt designs
Hence the nickname I gave them, “United Parcel Smashers”.
Oh come on! FedEx is better at that!
Can these units also analyse saturated liquids?
That company effectively refused to sell you a device that would have resulted in over 100,000 targeted adverts for their x-ray product.
This is true for any company. If you say you're going to disassemble it, they won't sell to you. Ask Apple.
thats what they were probably scared of xD
Sure but they didn't want their low quality made in China crap exposed or they'd lose business because no one would take a gamble on it. There is so much technology off the market now because China makes it cheaper, yet the bottom line is the Chinese versions don't work, or don't work for long. And now all the companies that once made it are bankrupt and half the men who mastered it are dead. We've destroyed so much technology by buying cheap crap. And by allowing globalist market economics to destroy industry. Don't get me wrong I'm not a protectionist in any extreme, but China has done more harm than any other country on Earth to our R&D as a species. I ONLY buy things made in Europe and her colonies or the USA. I'd rather pay ten times the price and get something that my grandchild can use than something that won't work or will be dead in a week.
I've legit purchased tools from China in the past and opened them only to have to repair them out the box, the most common is they sabotage them with oil grease FILLED with iron filings, I suspect it's thrown away from old machines, but every power tool from China today has that black gunk in it. I suspect that to make it that cheap they need ongoing sales and thus need to ensure their products are one use only.
Hi Clive
Yes these could analyse saturated liquids just as they can analyse the Yttrium Oxide powder.
Really enjoy your channel by the way.
Same concern as for reasons for imposing export control on these kind of scientific equipment.
"Little bit of a crack there, probably due to some mechanical energy input."
In layman's terms, "somebody dropped it."
He prolly dropped the gun, but didn't wanna tell his boss. So he paraphrased it to sound more fancy lol.
UPS or Fedex lol
Energy input in terms of the kinetic impact of a fuckwits weak mechanical retention when it comes to sensitive bodies.
'In layman's terms, "somebody dropped it."', rolled it and smoked it.
its quite a fantastic euphemism
In college in the early 2000's I worked on a project using an XRF gun with some fancy software running on the PDA that would process and decode chemical barcodes. By mixing certain compounds in various ratios we could create decodable messages (complete with checksums). The project was working on using it for high security applications. Our proof of concept used some pretty heavy excel workbooks and lots of copy and pasting, but it worked!
THAT'S SO COOL
Whoah, I wasted my time in college. That's a genius idea.
@@skipfred Ha. I would love to take credit for the tech, but I didn't develop it. It was on loan to us from a commercial org that appears to no longer be in business. I attended Ohio University and we had the "Center for Auto-ID" which did research into auto-id technologies such as barcodes, RFID, biometric ID, etc. I worked for the center as a student work/study type position testing different technologies. The XRF project was briefly put on hold twice, first when a professor outside my department found me in a lab with vials of chemicals that I didn't have all the MSDSs for, and the second time when I lost my dosimeter badge (which given the amount of radiation this outputs, was a little silly)...
I worked on another project, that I haven't looked for out in the wild, but I found just as interesting. Imagine having a CCD sensor, that rather than detecting light, it was a 2D sensor array that detected magnetism (on contact). A standard dot-peen style datamatrix barcode could be marked into a part, we would fill the holes with a magnetic putty and paint over it. The reader could see the dot matrix through the paint, and we effectively had a completely hidden barcode. It was also cool to look at things like the stripes on your credit card with the imager - it looked very much like a traditional 1D barcode.
@@TheSethcoleman that's so cool ! nowdays, i think the NFC technology could provide the same hidden barcodes
@@timeremapperegor1249 While true I suppose, I don't think a NFC device is nearly as hidden as say a coating or ingredient with a specific chemical signature. Ostensibly you could barcode a bar of gold, an entire batch of some super high end aerospace metal, money for counterfeit protection, etc, potentially in a completely indelible way. Pretty neat applications that NFC wouldn't begin to help with.
That bit at the end made me remember when I was a kid I got in trouble for wasting a whole box of band-aids. I discovered that if you opened the individual wrapping on the bandages in the dark, it would emit a glow so naturally I did it with all of them.
Didn't your parents know that this is how science work, experiments have to be repeated to make sure it's not a coincidence
I guess they don't thought you're doing a scientific experiment and just making a mess like usual 😀
Fab Funty it’s science once you write it down
@@letsgocamping88 Meh, I think any type of documentation works too - not necessarily just writing...
I was in the Navy a few decades ago and found when removing dress whites in the dark they would glow where they made contact with my skin as I removed them.
Hey i recognize your name from Yeti's videos
"I suspect that it's silver"
If only you had a tool that can analyze the composition of materials :P
Loved the video by the way
Bravo! I like your comment.
@@recklessroges Thank you, friend
😂 excellent
He *could* point the working one at the screen of the broken one...
@@Marci124 Just thought about that as I read your comment. It's funny because, I was thinking it's process was random, but then that doesn't work... The answer was right there the whole time. 😂
How delightful that it actually makes sci-fi sounds.
Yeah, those sounds made me chuckle every time he used it...
It is bettter than “Keep clear, keep clear, keep clear” you can just tell people to treat it like a phaser set to kill 😜
Its fun, but I suspect that it would get old fast.
The newer ones don’t, they just blink!
So do smoke alarms if you listen to the EM as is, without interpreting it as a commercial radio (for music etc…) would. RayGun sound :) And lightning is like eating crisps.
The detector is likely either a Si-PIN photodiode, or if it's a more recent(/expensive) unit, it's an SDD - silicon drift detector. Beryllium window, multi-stage peltier cooled stack construction.
@dustisdeadbodies85 😂
@TheNeatWhale No, SiLi detectors are not and have never been made in such tiny cans. They also have basically no resolution above ~200K, which would be very difficult to achieve here.
The closest that has ever been commercially available was the Kevex PSi, and that didn't last long on the market. Not to mention it was about the size of this entire handheld unit.
dustisdeadbodies85 the X-ray window is transparent aluminium
Back in the early 90's I was doing my MS in Physics. A company had provided funding to my university (so they didn't have to get a license from the NRC) to build a prototype very similar to this. The differences were that 1) we were using Co-57 as a source of gamma rays to excite the x-rays within the sample, 2) we were specifically looking for only Lead (to detect Lead paint in housing projects), and 3) we were using low resolution (cheap) NaI scintillator crystal attached to a photomultiplier tube as the detector. I earned my MS from that project, but the company funding the research had problems of one sort or another and never ended up producing an actual product.
@@andywinslow6631 Early handheld XRF tools used radioisotope sources. Usually Fe-55, which had to be replaced often due to decay.
I've just taken a break from data analysing a bunch of XRF assay work, and this 30-minute-old video pops up! Thank you, internet!
The best thing about this channel is that you don't treat you audience like they're idiots who don't know anything about science. It's so incredibly refreshing!
Keep it up!
UV fluorescence is actually a bit of as different process than X-ray fluorescence. When a fluorescent material absorbs a photon with a specific energy, an electron within its outermost orbital is excited. Rather than being ejected and leaving the system entirely, the electron jumps from its current orbital to a higher energy one, with the energy difference between the orbitals corresponding to the energy of the photon absorbed. The electron can then relax back down to its original state by releasing a photon--this is light you seen when shining a UV light on a fluorescent object. Now, there often is not perfect overlap between the lower energy orbital and the higher energy one, so when a photon is absorbed and an electronic transition occurs, the molecule can become vibrationally excited as well. The energy used in the vibrational excitation is "wasted" and does not contribute to the energy of the photon emitted. This is why fluorescence produces light that is lower in energy (longer in wavelength, or "redshifted") than the light that causes the initial excitation. Hope this makes sense!
So what is it that specifically affects the apparent color of the fluorescence?
I think he gave a very good explanation of the difference in the video.
@@DudemcmanStudios my thought is Evan's explanation is correct: the collapse of an excited electron down to a lower orbital emits a photon at an energy level reduced by loss. The energy of the exiting photon determines the wavelength. If exiting photos "returned" all energy of incoming UV...zero loss...the wavelength would be UV, but in reality the greater the loss through absorption by the parent atom the lower the energy of the exiting photon and hence the longer the wavelength from Uv down through the spectrum from violet through red and beyond.
I worked at a company that made a competitive product to this. Brings back memories watching this teardown. The high voltage power supply is very straight forward and unique. Its a resonant design. We potted our power supplies.
Interesting! In the video I see very long voltage multiplier. How many cascades are in it? From what circuit block is it powered? Is it a transformer or simply coil? Thanks for answers!
What's unbelievable is how clearly you convey very complex subject matter! If (most) junior/middle/high school physics/chemistry classes weren't simply just talked at, such as: "if you do this, this happens;" but rather shown and invited to participate in demonstrations or experiments with such clear explanations and education as to the reasons WHY - as you provide - we (humans) would be better off.
That silver piece at 13:35 is probably a monochromator crystal. Only certain x-rays with correct wavelength will scatter in the direction of the opening.
Love the video!
Thrilling. I had no idea such a portable device existed. Now I need one.
Was just saying to my self now I need one
Only if it detects aluminum
They at least used to be really expensive like 30k or more.
Wait 'til you see what they cost!
Fairly common usage in the environmental field, for example to detect lead in paint.
Thank you, and especially for mentioning the triboelectric effect. My first experience with a triboelectric charge occurred in the photo darkroom when I would unroll my 120 roll film in total darkness; when I pulled the adhesive tape holding the film to the spool to remove the film, I would see a faint bluish glow in the darkness where the adhesive was separating from the film. My friends and I thought this was so cool that we made other experiments with adhesive tape and substrates from which we would pull the tape and watch the effects. This also made a very interesting fog exposure on the film, and after it was developed and fixed, we could see the triboelectric light exposure that the effect made on the film. Thanks again!
I owned a dental X-ray machine rebuilding company for 20 years until I sold it in 2017. During that time period, I have repaired many different types of X-ray tube heads, and as a result I have learned about the different types of high voltage power supplies that were designed into those tube heads. With only a couple of exceptions, most X-ray heads employ a split DC power supply. That is, the X-ray tube normally needs between 70 KV and 90 KV depending on the type of tube head, and because of the relatively small space inside the metal enclosure, the manufacturers would split the HV supply into two separate sections. One section would feed -35KV to the cathode, and the other section would feed +35KV to the anode (in a 70KV tube head). I would have guessed that that's the way the XRF guns were designed, but according to your finding, Ben, it appears that they use a single-ended HV supply. By the way, some dental X-ray tubes have a thin Beryllium disc pressed into the circular window in the copper hood that surrounds the tungsten anode. Beryllium is nearly transparent to the X-ray spectrum that is produced by dental tube heads, and I'm guessing that might be the type of metal that you found in that XRF gun (rather than silver). But having Zero experience with those guns, I am just guessing about that. Fascinating video, Ben!
Yup that beryllium window has a very critical purpose. It stops the secondary electrons from bombarding the glass, causing a blurry image. It also allows for a uniform electrical field that prevents an asymmetry of the x ray emission fields.
Due to the geometry of the silver bit I suspect that it does not excites the silver to than let the silver emit x-rays, but that the silver does bragg refelction to filter out unwanted frequencies. This is the way you would do it to prepare your beam for an diffractometer or in Wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to get only one frequency (at a time).
X-ray fluorescence can can lead you into rabbit holes if you use the wrong program for interpret the data. There are programs for use with alloy identification wich work fine for that purpose. But if you use them with things like minerals they might tell you some wrong numbers since some peaks are close together and the program rules one out because that element is not used in alloys and gives you the other.
It is just a beryllium window and not silver. Beryllium is almost "transparent" for x-rays and thus not disturbs the measurement. No Bragg reflection is used in this kind of handheld XRF guns.
@@wvdh There's another comment thread on here (close to the top) where someone said they made these devices. According to them the window on the detector itself is in fact Beryllium.
Wait a minute 9:14 Didn't you say you forgot a recipe for good photochromic glass?? Did you figure it out with this????
Good question
Yes! In fact, I tried the gun on the photochromic sample, but it didn't return a result. I believe the concentration of silver is just too low to be detected. Another challenge is that the glass recipe includes information that is very difficult to recover from even a perfect chemical analysis of the final result. Most of the starting ingredients will be decomposed, oxidized, or reduced in the glassmaking process, so knowing times, temperatures and kiln atmosphere composition are critical.
@@AppliedScience I expected something like this. That's unfortunate.
I really wish I had this video during my crystallography class in college... Great job!
Dont act like u went to college. We r all youtube bums.
@@br6768 Speak for yourself dude..
@@aaron41 humor clearly got list on you 😄
@@user-jp1qt8ut3s crystallography 😏
They're just a bit pricey. About a "Good Car" pricey. ( www.labx.com/product/xrf-spectrometer )
I actually had almost the same (but black) HP iPAQ PDA. I was incredibly proud of it. It also used to run so hot that I used it as a hand warmer in winter, very convenient to use outside.
I used an XRF for in field soil analysis a few years back. Later had a reason to use it again and my company acted like I was preparing to tickle the dragons tail with the thing. As shown here it’s relatively safe as long as you’re not consistently shooting yourself in the face or junk, and keep it pointed away from you. Very useful tool.
The abundance of frivolous lawsuit filing individuals in today's world are most likely to blame for your company's weariness to lend it to you. And possibly the exorbitant price of the instrument itself played a part in it also.. 🤷🏻
When I was in high school many years ago I did a lot of photography and dark room work. One thing I noticed is that at the end of a roll of 120 film (2 1/4" x 2 1/4") there was some tape holding the end of the film strip to the plastic reel. When I pulled the tape off the film there would always be a green flash of light right where the tape was separating from the film. It never ruined any images as film is unwound and loaded into a stainless steel reel and then into the developing tank and the lid goes on before the lights are switched on, that is, the film is loaded in complete darkness so the tape glow was the only light in the room.
The same happens with some clear sticky tapes (Scotch?)
It's also popularly known to happen when opening a band-aid wrapper in the dark.
*Has alloy detecting device in his hands*
"I susepct it's silver"
... but understand silver isn't an alloy...
ive got one its called a nicon gun
It probably is beryllium, which you can't detect with this apparatus and that is exactly why it is used. I you use a metal that you can detect it will absorb a lot of the radiation, and you always get a measurement of that metal in your result.
@@wvdh No I think its silver indeed but i doubt Ben's hypothesis not so much as a fluorescent "monochromator" but more like a filter. Medical x-ray machines have aluminium filters so the beam has less low energy photons which increase your dose without contributing to make a radiography, so I guess its similar but silver being of a higher atomic number it can be much thinner and only let pass the highest energy photons.
@@teresashinkansen9402 There is no reason to lower the dose on a metal sample. And you lower the output of your x-rays a lot by filtering, especially for lower energy x-rays, which is what you are using here. Titanium Ka energies are around 4.5keV, so anything above that can contribute to the signal.
Positive material identification, what a wonder that has been to the engineering field. Discarding a few tons of low-alloy steel because you lost the MTRs is one thing, but when you get into the ritzy stuff one of these starts to look like a very good deal.
Ore/material supplies have been known to put a layer of good stuff over the top of rubbish. So now the testers dig DEEP and test the core/base of samples. :D
I believe one of the uses for these devices is to see that the king pin that holds your air line jet engine to the wing is not counterfeit, apparently a lot of bad stuff is around, scary thougth!
@@jimmiller5891 Yep. Life dependant stuff.
@@jimmiller5891 If people only knew what goes on behind the scenes of things we take for granted as being 'safe'.... Luck plays a larger role in your life than you think it does!
The topology of the HV supply is very intriguing, I'm curious of the drive waveform and frequency. The negative supply is common in these industrial use x-ray tubes...
The day will come where we will have thousands and thousand of Bens doing there little thing on the internet out of curiosity. What a wonderful time that will be.
I've got to say, without a doubt, you are *the* coolest.
Thank you so much for making these videos for us. Seriously. :)
We have the much newer 8000 model where I work. It can read elements from magnesium onwards. It's used for verification of aerospace materials, however some of the guys in the shop will bring in rock for us to check for anything of value. Really impressive piece of tech.
You find the most interesting subjects. Love your channel & thanks for all the work you put into it for everyone's benefit.
I once helped an engineer install the software for an XRF gun on his computer. I got to talking to him about it and must have proven myself nerdy enough because he proceeded to give me a full demo.
We went around the room sampling doorknobs, a metal grounding plate, a PCI card connector (with some difficulty), and then a steal filing cabinet. The cabinet read as mostly titanium. Because it was painted white.
I forget what model it was but I remember I could have bought my car (at the time) about 40 times over or one of them.
Many thanks for the teardown. Although I come across these analysers regularly at work, principally for Alloy Verification of CRA pipes, I have learnt two new things. 1. Why carbon content analysis is so unreliable. 2. Why they talk about tertiary X-rays in conjunction with this method of chemical analysis.
They do not see carbon. They just predict using some database.
Your story reminds me of watching the Wired Documentary on Shenzen China where they talk about open source and how everybody everywhere else is is all "OMG how do you protect your IP and make money?" but in Shenzen their reply is "Whats new? This is how we make money now". We have definitely reached a point where patents and the protectionist ideas that they encompass are a hindrance to progress rather than a driver of it.
You do not explain how the returning X-rays are analyzed for their spectral content. Is there a crystal that diffracts the rays? if so, how are the angles of diffraction measured?
It amazes me the things people take for granted. This is an amazing tool. I haven’t the slightest idea about the majority of what you said, other than my limited memory of high school science classes, but these are some of my favorite things to watch. Like modern marvels or how it’s made... Great way of explanation.
Actually I believe one of my neighboring fire departments has a similar tool on one of their hazmat units. I remember them showing us something very similar at a training last year.
i remember hearing about the scotch tape/glass x-ray discovery years back, glad to hear that it was actually applied for practical purpose just too bad we couldnt get a tear down of mechanism.
I remember trying it in the 80s and getting a glow. Presumably the glow was from x-rays causing the glass to fluoresce.
"Mechanical energy input to it" = someone dropped it
i know at least 1 suspect
@@IllSkillz Applied Science + Linus Collab
that'd be "Spurious mechanical energy input". Otherwise we must assume it was standard, if over strong, percussive maintenance.
Duct tape didn't work, hit it...
Walk into an airport with a roll of scotch tape; OK, folks, I got a FIFTY THOUSAND VOLT X-RAY GUN HERE! I want a ticket to Cuba right NOW!
You remember that Guantanamo is located in Cuba? Be careful what you wish for.
@@svengaefgen5909 if he isn't black he is probably fine
@@user-qx7tm5df8j Only if he's white and has an assault rifle. Then some orange idiot will call him a hero.
You are not allowed to have a roll of tape on your carry on luggage.
@@misterhat5823 im too tired of this orange idiot. How can nobody see that he is actively working against the usa.
From what I see of the feedback circuit, it is using a similar set up that is used in substations for high voltage power distribution where you use a coil that is coupled magnetically to the high voltage line and is then stepped down for instrumentation. I am not an electrical engineer, but I was an industrial electrician and my instrumentation training included power grid and high voltage applications, but more of what you would see in power distribution or for use in an industrial plant, like what is used in some electrochemistry based processes.
You should have gone full meta and used the functional XRF gun to measure the composition of the metal plate on the emitter of your non-functional XRF gun!
You can't microwave a microwave with a bigger microwave.
@@vmelkon Is that a challenge?
@@vmelkon Yes, you can.
@@Hyraethian
I challenge you to microwave a microwave with a bigger microwave. If you can do the impossible, then you are a braver man than I.
I've been looking at ways I can afford to get an XRF gun to identify elements in ores I've been extracting elements from. I've been wanting to limit my exposure to arsenic from minerals I process and knowing how much is present would help me determine which chemicals or the quantity of chemical ratios to use in avoiding the creation of soluble arsenic salts. Plus it would be nice to not have to assay material to determine how much gold, silver, platinum, copper, etc is present in these ore bodies.
"Mechanical energy input" lol I'm going to start using that term on failure reports
-"Aah, see here Officer, to the untrained eye it might look like a collision, however I see it more like an unexpected mechanical energy input event"
A current wish of mine is to make techniques like this and spectroscopy more accessible to the public. Would make it so much easier to see the elements interacting in everyday life
How do you do that!
You explain complex things in a manner that an idiot like me can understand.
X-ray theory was a 2 moth topic in school covering diffraction and fluorescence.
Honestly was more confused at the end of the course than before I started.
2 minutes of explanation from you and its all very clear to me now.
Thank you.
I watch these videos every night in order to fall asleep, idk if this dude’s voice bores me to sleep or if it relaxes me to sleep 🤷🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️ honestly no idea but either way THANK YOU!!!!
damn i've been looking for one of these for years for a decent price, and now that you've made a video on them my chances have gone from slim to none. ah well. at least it's a good video.
Me too, the Amptek experimental fixture is expensive, but may be the only feasible choice.
Watch The Range , Ranges It Covers .
Some Only Cover A Few Elements .
More Expensive XRF Guns Cover A More Wider Range .
@Milo Godeke you underestimate it. it won't affect the prices so much for this particular item, but it will mean a lot more people are looking for cheap ones to pop up, which they occasionally do.
I've build low energy XRF for measuring aluminium and silicon (1.5keV/1.74keV) the xray source was Fe55 (5.9keV), it was done in helium to reduce the reduce attenuation of air, and the signal from Argon (~3keV) . The sensor was a bare CCD, the image processed to make histogram of values of pixels with empty neighbours(iow where all the energy of the photon was in a single pixel) . Most common sensors are just one detector and pulse processing and use a beryllium window a few um thick
That's an amazing gadget. Thanks for another great video!
The sensor in a case with metal film cover is from Amptek. Either a SiPIN or SDD sensing device. There is a built-in two-stage peltier cooler to drop the sense-element temperature and cut down significantly on thermal noise interference at low x-ray energies. The can is also evacuated and the cover metal/filter is most likely element "Be". Very thin prone to leakage - handle very carefully.
You can replace x-ray tube and power supply use Cs140 radio isotope. It puts out a nice single peak at 88kev. There will be some silver peak interference also but low cost online for about $130.
I have experimented a bunch using the Amptek mca + shaper + sensor and their software.
Quite a bit has also been done thru the Theremino website using Am241 source and lex gamma detector or proportional counter tube.
Sure you don't mean Cadmium-109? Caesium-140 has only a half life of just over a minute, which makes this rather unpractical.
Yes I posted a correction, 109Cd from Spectrum Techniques of Oak Ridge TN
1:20 These type of machines can give dose rates at the exit window in the order of tens of SIEVERTS per hour. Sievert, that is, not milli- or microsieverts. Your detector is absolutely not sensitive to the energy range of your XRF and therefore you wrongfully conclude that it doesn't emit much radiation. I sincerely hope that you don't have any radiation check samples that come even close to these dose rates (or even 4-5 orders of magnitude less) .
With dose rates like these you can get over the skin dose limit in a minute or so (for occupational exposure: 500 mSv in a year) or a few seconds (50mSv for public)
Geiger counters suck ass at X-day detection when it originates in a 40kV tube in my experience. They are just not designed for this job, it seems. I agree that the measurement was misleading. This may be 7uA at 40kV, but say a dental X-ray may be 60kV at 8mA and exposure time is in tens of milliseconds. 10 seconds at 7uA is probably an exposure similar to a dental X-ray, or at least within 10x ballpark as far as energy delivered. Don’t point that thing at people, for sure, and don’t run it unshielded without a dosimeter that X-ray techs use. You’ve got one chance to goof up, so better be safe than sorry, AS!
Also take into account that this is an almost unfiltered x-ray spectrum, so the dose /µa will be much higher.
The figures I used in my first post do assume a more powerful XRF (50kV ~100µA), so this might be a bit less dangerous, but we're still talking about minutes of use to get significant doses.
Ive experimented with far worse... the scariest was a Dynarad battlefield x ray unit. It made a visible dim blue cone of light in the air at full power and buried the needle on the higest range on a cdv 715. Promptly got turned off and put in the box... Absorbed a few mR testing that one to be sure.😲😵😵😵
@@christopherleubner6633 Hard to believe that you saw ionization of the air, you probably just saw the light field of the x-ray unit used for positioning.
The tube efficiency is kind of similar for al medical x-ray tubes when taking into account the tube current and tube voltage, and you don't see that effect with much higher tube currents, so it's impossible to see that with a portable x-ray unit.
Accordign to wikipedia the CDV-715 has a maximum range of 500 R/h or roughly 5 Sv/h, which is around the correct order of magnitude for the dose rate in the direct x-ray beam.
At one time I worked alongside a guy whose previous job had been testing or tuning a metal alloy composition analyzer. But unlike this X-ray device, it analyzed the sparks resulting from a grinding operation. All optical spectrum. The development job entailed selecting the grinding wheel material and subtracting its contribution to the spark colors. Also, selecting the optimal grinding force and several other details. I believe they were using photo multiplier tubes (more than one) with various filters.
You can actually see the charge of the tape being unrolled when you're in the dark. I think i tried it with either brown tape (tessa) or paper tape (no brand,standard large,wide).
I get the glow when I peel open my Breathe Right strips in a dark bathroom. It never occurred to me that it was emitting x-rays.
That reminds me I used to have a cat that when I would brush him in a dark room you could see the static quite clearly.
@@IvorMektin1701 AFAIK, generating X-Rays this way, only works in a vacuum.
So you have nothing to be concerned about.
@@m.k.8158
Oh I wasn't worried at all. My ex was an X-ray tech (ex-ray) and I read her textbooks.
"How was work today?"
"Another day of squishing and filming boobs."
I'm an undergraduate astrophysics major working on soft x-ray band detection with CMOS technology and lemme say, I can't blame them for not seeing those darn oxygen lines. Took us a year of refining the algorithm and dozens of hours of data collection just to see the oxygen line of illuminated teflon
Cool.
(Looks on ebay for one and then sees price)
neat. I don't need it that badly.
Same... :D
Cool; there are two manufacturers of the x-ray detector diodes; Moxtek (Utah) and Ampek. Moxtek made the x-ray source modules and detector modules for the ThermoFisher XRF guns. They were about $25k each when they first came out, but really useful for aerospace material checks and almost anything else. These are 'soft' xray's, so you can see up to about 50kEv energies. The photodiodes used even when cooled with Peltier devices have thermal noise that limits resolution of around 150 to 170eV.
I wrote code for the XRF spectrometer (Moxtek later released) for a DSP chip.
It's fun to play with atoms. Careful where you point that thing... anything the x-rays hit flouresce which is not good for DNA...
Patented technology - but not wanting to share the technical details of the implementation.
What part of the patent process is broken? I guess the whole thing.
The patent does not describe the technical details and the patent is worthless without the money to sue a competitor.
I think nothing is broken here. Patents are there not to help others make the thing or understand how it works. Patents are a legal tool to establish a monopoly, and are intentionally written to be as general as possible. As far as i understand it, at least.
@@victortitov1740 Patents are an exchange.
The inventor is opening his invention in exchange for a time limited monopoly. Patents are _literally_ there for others to understand the invention.
They are written "as generally as possible" in order to have "ground to loose" to prevent circumvention by trivial alternation.
Patents to not establish a monopoly - you competition can still steal your design. The patent holder would have to sue the infringer. That will cost a lot of money.
The infringing party then can drag out the process, call on expert witnesses, drag out the process ... and in the end the inventor ends up with one or two instances won, but the case hanging in revision in the next instance, where the inventor is out of money to fill motions, so the case ends in a default judgment.
@@victortitov1740 Your first sentence is the theory on how patents are supposed to work, the second sentence is the actual current reality.
AvE made a fun of a similar absurd some time ago "...this technology is patented and confidential..." offcourse
In a way you're right but what's the alternative? Not disclosing your invention, then someone open your product copy your design and what you got? nothing. At very least with a patent you got something to hold on to.
This channel is absolute gold. I'm so happy that something like it can exist.
windows on these are usually beryllium, from what i noticed. they have light gray/greenish oxide.
For the record, you have one of the best channels on TH-cam.
Ah, I miss Windows Mobile, had some good times back with my mogul
did inventory control for an engineering firm and all the scan guns used it... got into trouble when I got caught playing Doom on it :P
Still a supported version in existence, actually :) All those logistics software from the 2000s, ah..
I rocked 3 generations of Clie's. I loved them.
I sorta miss those days where we had dedicated devices to walk around with: My phone, my PDA, mp3 player/CD player, my notebook, my calendar/planner, my computer, wallet, atm card, watch, my camera... Wait. No I don't.
SAME! 6700, Mogul, the. Touch Pro
I was using apps way before people called them apps. I put PROGRAMS on my PDA phone. 😂
Fascinating! I've always wondered how these work. I'll now have to search around and see if more modern iterations can detect lighter elements. Your channel is ace. Thank you so much!
I wish I had a time machine to show this to Moseley. I bet he would flip the f out.
Love that calcite phosphorescence and the fact that you can "see" the manganese creating it! The little angled output aperture is intriguing. I don't know if it's silver in there, I bet there's actually a rubidium hydrogen phthalate (RbAP) crystal monochromator in there using Bragg diffraction off the crystal planes to select a single wavelength output. In any case, it also wouldn't surprise me to find a beryllium foil for the output aperture or detector window so careful w/that too....
When he used the laser we got to see it, too... more or less.
Would like to show Roentgen, Crooks and so on
These small handheld XRF guns don't use Bragg diffraction, bigger table sized XRF apparatuses do use the configuration with the Bragg diffraction. And the "silver" is indeed a beryllium window.
@@wvdh interesting
the metal-window in front of the xray tube acts a xray filter to block the part of the spectrum below the K-alpha peak of the anode (i.e. the target) (edit: no, that was wrong. the filter blocks everything
> i hope you found that interesting
well, DUH. there's a reason why I slap open my youtube notification whenever it's a new video from this channel.
Truly one of the best explanations on XRF I've heard.....Thanks
I have always wanted one of these so I can figure out what all the scrap metal in my "to use someday" pile is. People always say to just take it to a scrap yard with a 6 pack of beer, but so far I have yet to find a scrap yard where that works.
I called a business-to-business scrap yard and the foreperson was happy to measure a meteorite, after first swinging it through the vehicle radiation detection gate. Probably wouldn't have been interested in random scrap metal.
A very interesting tear-down of an esoteric device. The clarify of your explanations of this very sophisticated technology is excellent. Thank you.
Meanwhile I'm over here going "OMG A WINDOWS CE POCKET PC IN THE WILD!!!"
The negative voltage on the tube is the same way my watch works. This let me use very tiny dual p-channel mosfets at logic level on the segment and digit controls which really helped. It's interesting to see that kind of technique used elsewhere.
Do a laser rust removal gun next! PLEASE!! its even more scifi :P
Nice. I'm currently trying to build a basic XFR as an addon to my diy xray / ct cabinet and this comes at exactly the right time. Thank you :)
kudos! please consider open sourcing the design
I would really love seeing a collaboration with Cody's lab! I'd wager you'll create the first wormhole
"Don't cross the streams "
I've seen an electrostatically deflected CRT where the anode is supplied with 2500v and the cathode -2500v, This was done so that the deflection circuitry could be close to chassis potential. This of course required the heater to be supplied by its own isolated transformer winding.
Great videos, great content. Intelligent and enjoyable. I always look forward to you doing the next 'impossible' thing ("let's build an electron microscope!" Me - mouth open in disbelief as he actually makes a home made electron microscope).
However, on the specific subject of hand held X-ray guns...
Personally, I wouldn't trust those hand held guns down to 0.01%. You would be hard pushed to get that kind of elemental sensitivity and repeatability from a quarter million pound (£) 30Kv, wavelength dispersive laboratory grade instrument with certified calibration standards. Even at modest masses (first transition series metals) there is the chance of interference from overlapping lines because the resolution of the detector is not that good. The problem gets worse as you move up the periodic table.
Portable X-ray guns are brilliant at discriminating between elements and different alloys, but everything is a compromise. You can't take a half tonne, lab grade XRF on the passenger seat of your car and set it up in a couple of minutes in a warehouse on an industrial estate. For that kind of work, hand held is difficult to beat. But 0.01% precision is unrealistic. The manufacturers can put two decimals on the readout, but almost all of the time that last digit is just noise.
Now, if you want real elemental discrimination, how about building an ICP-MS? (!!!)
You presumed that the audience would understand why the end had to be negative 40k volts. (I presume it's because electrons are negatively charged and by having them generated at the negative end they will be accelerated towards the {relatively positive } zero charge end.) But the tube is creating x-rays, so there must be a conversion from electrons to x-rays. Does that conversion create scattering or is it linear?
Opens coat "wanna buy a gold watch" Ben "can I look at it for 10 seconds " he he
How does the device give you a percentage concentration of each element? For example, at 11:08, it says there is 0.22% Manganese, but doesn't give any other figures of other elements. Doesn't it have to detect all the other elements in the substance in order to give a percentage concentration for any of them?
Me: DevOps Technical lead/principal at tech company thinking I’m smart creating a bridge rectifier power supply as a hobby.
I then watch these videos which include everything from chemistry, physics, assembly code, programming, circuit design... to name a few.
What a small fish I am.
I actually found some samples of that special calcite in an abandoned gold mine up in Canada. I was playing around with a laser pointer one day, and accidentally discovered that strange phosphorescent property. I talked to several geologists, and I scoured the internet at the time trying to find out what it was. But I was told by the geologists that it wasn't phosphorescent, because their UV light didn't activate it. They also didn't view my laser as a "significant UV source", so I didn't even bother with them.... I was able to work out that it was some kind of mineral that was activated or "doped" with an element. Similarly to radioluminescent doped zinc sulfide. I never would have guessed that it was manganese doing the work though, of all things. Fascinating!
I've never been this early to a TOP TH-camr! Carry on!
Nice vid as always Ben. Most bigger x Ray's use a bipolar supply and floating the filament winding...
I guess refusing to sell their Product is one of the reasons why the company aint doing so well.
To be fair, If i knew how to get x rays from sticky tape, i wouldn't want to share it to the world. Not for a couple hundred $
@@willyou2199
My brother once told me that Toyota bought a minivan, back when the minivan was a new fad, took the car apart completely in a gymnasium to study it.
Nice job. More tear downs would be welcome. I figured you might explain the noise? Is it the speaker in the tablet as a warning or is it the high voltage power supply?
I would LOVE to see Big Clive's hands on this.
Asdayasman アスデイ I disagree, because you can’t cook sausages with it 😜
Will it whoofle?
I'd prefer to see mikeselectricstuff do a full tear down. Do not get me wrong, Big Clive is good, but for a XFR you want Mike.
Or the The Signal Path, that would be interesting.
I saw the thumbnail and thought it was BC
using a spinning wheel with a rod connected on the side like on train wheels to produce a linear force (what are these called?) you could make some thing symaler to what he described using two metal plates and a silicone pad, you could generate some X rays.
i wonder how well this scales?
"mechanical energy input"
Ave parlance: "a 200lb gorilla threw it at a wall"
That's a petite gorilla right there.
Nice video. Regarding the difference with uv fluorescence, x ray fluorescence is triggered by a ionization process while uv fluorescence is due to an electron transition from an exited state to a ground state. So they are not easily comparable as you show.
"If we aim those X-Rays at some material that's made of atoms"...
Next episode: Making Dark Matter with a Dishwasher and a Vacuum Pump
I noticed a new Applied Science video and texted my friends, who dropped everything to watch. Yeah, my nerd card is secure. LOVE YOUR WORK SIR!
That company not selling you the cartridge is like when Gary Kildall didn't take the meeting with IBM.
I would like more information on how the detector works and separates the different X ray energy levels in the return signal.
How is the signal processed?
I designed circuitboards for that company
You know who first worked on and with those devices? The soviets, it was mainly used to control welding spots, but they improved this technology a lot and as the first ones for nuclear reactors piping control.
13:08 if only you had a device that could tell you exactly what that was made of. :)
If the window material is beryllium, it won’t have an X-ray fluorescence signature that can be detected. Z(Be)
I "mechanical energy input"ed out of high school but your videos make me smarter
I used to work with an x-ray gun in my job. It cost us 20.000 usd
Yup they are spendy gadgets. Most of the trouble is getting the narrow band x ray energy. Needs to be a single color for lack of better description. The silver window thingie is the monocrome k edge filter that pases only the 40kv band.
The above machine solves a mystery I had been pondering for ages. A friend of mine knows a firm into jewellery and has a machine where you get a readout of all the different metals in the sample. Perhaps they deal in second hand gold and silver and need to know the purity. Anyway, chap says, put this silver bracelet in I bought from India. He's really fond of it, but out came the analysis and it was found to contain large quantities of cadmium.
That's neat. The fact that they use a negative voltage to throw the electrons away instead of pulling them to the plate.
From the x-ray tube's point of view, the anode is still positively charged.
@@Spirit532 I'm not certain what you mean by the words "from the x-ray tube's point of view". The tube is the whole device containing the voltages in question. It seems sensible to say "from the electron's perspective" or "from the coil's perspective", but "from the tube's point of view" seems a bit non-technical of a starting point.
@@AtlasReburdened The x-ray tube, which is just the vacuum-sealed glass device, not the entire HV section, does not "contain" any voltages.
I am able to get negative voltage from an AA battery if I flip the leads of my multimeter. From an LED's perspective does it behave differently if you measure the voltage that way?
@@Spirit532 Ok, I was speaking from a technical standpoint. Are you just being padantic about the definition of the word "contain"?
I work at a synchrotron facility and we usually use Beryllium as windows to let X-rays out of vacuum chambers with very little attenuation since it is the metal with the smallest atom.
They might be using the same here in which case you have to be careful since Beryllium is toxic. So there is that.
BTW. I love all your videos :)