I slept in, when I awoke the wife and kid were working on a science
project where they detailed the life of a scientist. They had
chosen Bill Roentgen !!!
I helped them with the gist ---it was an accident, he was goofing
with HV and tubes and had a fluorescent screen that flickered.
(I keep insisting that if they write "barium platinocyanide" that they
explain its fluorescent, which is the point... do not pretend
that chemical is common knowledge..)
Anyway, I managed to reconstruct my 5-year dormant x-ray system in the time it took them to work the report. Tried one tube, nothing.
Another, I got some CDV700 clicks but no meter change. I started to take pictures, and after a few shots I noticed that the meter had in fact increased. Slow integration time! And/or tube changes due to heating. I went back to the first tube, and got better results.
A $15 russkie blink & click detector was useless. The CDV700 was better, audible clicks and eventually the meter moved. Up to 0.05 mR/hr on the 100x scale, at 19cm, yawn. But an integrating ionization chamber used by dentists registered about 0.1 R/sec (!!!!) At 10 cm. To be conservative I have to believe the
strongest measure. I have no NIST calib.
I had been annoyed at myself for buying the integrating x-ray detector at first, as its poor (though slowly responsive) on rocks etc; but for x-rays its great, it turns out.
The hazard of course is my lack of isolation from 110V mains; the rad is on very little time, and I have a m between us, and its just me.
The mains AC is totally OSHA unapproved.
The coil coupling to the tube is via a small artifactual spark gap and the CDV700 clicks were coupled to the sparks; so unsure of dose per pulse. I have bolts in the HV terminals of the coils, and aluminium foil connecting the base pins, and an aluminum foil cap acting as a capacitor to the getter or tube top. Standard _Bell Jar_ stuff.
(I've read that Bill R had 8 pulses/sec and only ~30kV from his
Oudin coil; I'm using antiparallel ignition coils, a light dimmer, and some series 300V caps to pass just the transients from the dimmer.)
"Keep one hand in your pocket" --ALANIS MORISSETTE
The power supply is an AC dimmer (ie SCR gating the AC mains) series connected into a few 300V caps fed into antiparallel ignition coils. The dimmer makes abrupt transitions and the caps pass the transitions; the coils step up the voltage.
Running the system. Note the geiger counter (on 10x) and the x-ray meter (measuring R!!)
