Wow. I have worked for 37 years in medical x-ray installation, repair, and maintenance. I have to say I am very impressed with your ability to consolidate so many disciplines of study into one project. Technically I think I could do this. But, I don't have the patience necessary to solve the multitude of problems that you had to solve in building this machine and then creating a 3D image of objects in your CT application. Kudos to you and may you fare well in your chosen profession, whatever it may be.

You commented that you tried to make fluoroscopic images but it was riddled with "bright pixel" artifacts. First try moving the camera out of the beam. Use a mirror angled to the incident plane. Even if it doesn't fix the artifact your camera will live longer. Second, collimate the beam. Use a lead lined cone to limit the exposed area to the ROI at the incident plane. Looking at the screen in your photos, the entire screen is aglow. You don't need all that scatter adding noise to the image. You could also experiment with thin aluminum filters placed at the port to eliminate low energy photons; low energy adds little to the image and much to the noise.

With continuous x-ray you may have smeared flouroscopic images. This is inherent to the decay rate of the screen. The fix is a faster screen. Ideally, you would have a rapid screen and pulse the x-ray syncronized to the CCD image capture time of your camera in movie mode. The idea is to create a stop-action image just as a strobe light does for photography. That would take a lot of tinkering; a lot has to happen in 40ms.

If you get fluoro to work you can capture things like fluid flow through a device. You can enhance fluid imaging with a radio opaque dye -- tincture of iodine comes to mind.

I am certain that you are aware already but just in case; a fixed anode requires a long time to cool. Diligent adherence to the tube cooling curve will prolong the life of the tube.

Again, many good wishes for your future endeavors.

ey ive got the same soldering iron

Soldering iron mates.

Holy shit this is by far one of the coolest projects ive seen here... keep it up, this is awesome!

Thank you :P

Any lead panel shielding? Lead is cheap :) And you could encase it in epoxy etc to seal in the leadness :)
Very cool build - could see lots of practical applications, just with some very good overlapping shielding :)

It has 1mm of lead that removes around 97% of the photons energy. Adding more lead was not necessary since the machine is activated remotely, so you are not behind the beam, you are just in another room or in another country if you want.

Expanding on the Marie Curie vibe - your geiger counter is generally under-responding. You should be using an ion chamber to get a reasonable measurement. Also, although the beam is much more intense in the forward direction you will be getting substantial radiation in the other directions, even with a tube housing. Don't assume since the geiger counter is much angrier in front of the machine that you are safe behind it.

Did you find documentation for your specific dental tube or did you discover the pinout yourself? I purchased a dental tube a long time ago with the intention of making a homemade X-ray machine also, but never got around to doing anything since I didn't know the pinout for it and couldn't find any info on the model I purchased.

Edit: Nevermind, the tube you are using is very well documented and simple to use. Mine is a full up dental X-ray machine head with no visibility to the internals, but does have the built in shielding.

The pinout is easy to know, the pin not connected to the others via some resistance is the grid pin. The other two are the filament pins.

Massive accomplishment! 

Congratulations.

How much electricity does it use? I do ecology research and I always wanted to take x-rays of bromeliad plants in the field :(

Thanks c: it only draws around 80W.

What material is the sheet you're using for exposure? Do you set up the camera and leave the room/building during exposure? Have you had any issues with having the camera in the x-ray beam or do you take pictures off-axis with the beam?

My screen is a Fuji Speed Green, I want to test other screens like some Kodak Lanex but they are pricey. Yes, I send a command to the machine that sets a countdown and I leave it alone until it has finished, I'm not in front of the machine taking the picture.

I always put the camera on axis (in front of the beam), the pictures I get are great as you can see. Only when I'm recording on video I get some bright pixel noise.

I was lucky to find it new on eBay for around 60 bucks. It's a CEI OX/70-G4.

Amazing work but please don't end up like Marie Curie