YouTuber Builds His Own X-Ray Machine After Getting Hit With a $69K Hospital Bill

A YouTuber from California built his own x-ray machine after getting stuck with a pricey hospital bill.

Although the DIY approach resulted in a fully functioning device, we do not recommend you try building your own X-ray machine at home—radiation exposure can be dangerous.

After receiving a medical treatment that included a round of antibiotics and an X-ray scan, Californian Will Osman thought he got stuck with a $69,000 hospital bill. Luckily, Osman's insurance covered most of the bill, but that still left him on the hook for $2,500.

"I avoided surgery, but they still billed nearly $70,000," Osman tells Popular Mechanics, adding that the bill included an abdominal CT scan, medication, and two nights in a hospital room. Annoyed with the exorbitant cost of hospital treatments and procedures, Osman, a YouTuber and engineer, decided to build his own fully-functional homemade X-ray machine.

⚠️ DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME: X-rays slightly increase your risk of cancer. Prolonged exposure to high levels of radiation are hazardous to your health and may cause vomiting, bleeding, and hair loss among other serious symptoms.

In less than a day, he was able to build an entire X-ray machine, although he says gathering the materials for the project took a few months.

According to Osman, the hardest part of building the device was working on the energy-converting glass X-ray tube. Using a 20-year-old dental X-ray head, Osman says he removed the high-voltage circuit and wired the tube to his own high-voltage power supply.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

"Then, I used a low-voltage variable power supply to drive the tube's filament, which controls the quantity of X-rays generated," Osman says. "It's hard to see X-rays, though, so a special sheet of material called an intensifying screen is used to convert the X-rays into visible light, then these photons are captured by a DSLR camera I chose for its extreme low-light sensitivity."

As for safety, Osman is very much aware of the hazards that come with building and using a device that emits radiation. X-rays are energy waves capable of passing through skin and bones; when a person gets hit with an X-ray, their body absorbs some of that radiation which, over time, can make someone susceptible to developing cancer in the future.

"For my entire time owning this tube, it's been powered on for less than 20 seconds, generating 2 mA of X-rays at 60 kV, which isn't anything crazy. I specifically used a low-light camera with a long exposure so I could capture a quality image with less X-rays," Osman explains.

Plus, he says that a person is exposed to more cosmic radiation on a transcontinental flight than from an X-ray, so Osman wasn't too worried about his exposure. Likewise, it's reported that we're exposed to natural sources of radiation in our daily lives, with the average person in the U.S. receiving approximately 3 mSv (a unit of radiation dose) of natural radiation annually.

Osman says the real concern was the high voltage used to power the machine.

"I used 40kV silicone insulated wire and surrounded that with additional silicone tubing, and then just stayed away from the tube during operation. After the initial tests, a giant 2mm lead sheet was placed around the tube," Osman says.

Since completing the build, Osman has taken the machine apart, since he only built it "for demonstration purposes," and doesn’t intend to use it again unless he gets another $69,000 hospital bill.

Daisy Hernandez Daisy writes for Runner's World, Bicycling, and Popular Mechanics.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io