As he should(n’t)
What do you do when you receive a hospital bill of $69,210.32? You go home and build your very own X-ray machine. At least that’s what William Osman did anyway.
The Youtuber who is also an engineer, started dwelling on the idea of creating his own X-ray machine after a visit to the hospital left him with a $69,210.32 bill. Fortunately, it only had to pay about $2500 as his health insurance covered most of it but it still got him thinking about the other people who couldn’t afford such health plans. So is it possible to build a cheaper version of the X-ray machine? Well the answer depends on how much you value your life. If you don’t care about getting exposed to different kinds of harmful radiations and other side effects, then you should definitely give it a try but if you’re even the slightest bit concerned about your wellbeing, then please don’t try this at home.
It seems like for Osman, satisfying his curiosity is more important than the safety of his own life as he said, “My will to do science is significantly stronger than my will to live. This is my magnum opus. This is the most dangerous contraption I have ever built.” To build the DIY X-ray machine, Osman bought a $155 X-ray vacuum tube from a broken dental X-ray machine on Ebay, a giant roll of sheet lead, several Geiger counters and an electricity supply capable of delivering 60,000 volts. With the X-ray machine assembled in his very own garage, Osman was able to produce a good quality image of a random finger bone he had in his possession.
This budget-friendly X-ray machine and its results received mix reactions from different radiologists. Dr. Michael Cellini praised Osman’s effort for creating a machine at home even if the images produced weren’t capable of providing a sound diagnosis. However, Dr. Cellini was not amused when Osman decided to test the machine on his own hand and said, “The X-rays produced are not as bad as a CT scan – but that doesn’t mean you should do it.” Meanwhile some of the comments on the video exclaimed how it was not a very wise idea as one wrote, “[A]s a radiation safety officer at a materials lab, 80% of this video had me screaming internally.”
Nevertheless, it’s still a pretty impressive project, even if it’s only capable of diagnosing that you broke your bones when you can clearly feel them broken yourselves.