Applied Science - 2020-08-31
I show how an X-ray fluorescence gun works, do a teardown and failure analysis, and discuss a new kind of XRF tech now "available" on eBay. The XRF data can be transferred from the gun to a PC, and analyzed with http://pymca.sourceforge.net/ I did this for several materials, but ran out of time in this video to show the software usage, which is quite involved. Good overall description of XRF: https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/University_Physics/Book%3A_University_Physics_(OpenStax)/Map%3A_University_Physics_III_-_Optics_and_Modern_Physics_(OpenStax)/08%3A_Atomic_Structure/8.06%3A_Atomic_Spectra_and_X-rays Electron shell shielding described via roller derby ?! https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cheminter/chapter/electron-shielding/ XRF supplies: https://www.amptek.com/ MightyOhm geiger counter: https://mightyohm.com/blog/products/geiger-counter/ The two XRF guns in this video were generously donated by one of my viewers. Thank you! The Tribogenics tape-peel XRF gun on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Watson-XRF-Handheld-Metal-Alloy-Analyzer/123646159115 Applied Science on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AppliedScience
Hi! It is very possible that i built that very analyzer here in Kennewick, WA. The HV supply, safety, and control circuitry was designed by Sergey Flippytchev (retired). The processor board was designed by Vasilli Kobylchak. The remainder was designed by Tren Cramer (mechanical engineer) and yours truly (systems engineer). Another feat that goes unnoticed is the math and software behind it all. The software and applications team were the ones tasked with pulling out intelligent information from a very small, noisy signal coming from the detector. Some more info.. The detector looks like an old Metorex/Oxford detector. it has a 2-stage Peltier cooler inside the can. The window that is welded to the top of the can is 8um beryllium foil, and the entire assembly is under high vacuum. Very fragile. don't touch it. don't smell it. protect it at all costs. one slight bump and you'll hear a pop. They are not repairable, and they don't make those anymore. If you have any questions i'd be happy to answer them for you!
Hi Robert. Congratulation for such work. Are you working for Bruker now? I would like to contact you through LinkedIn. Best regards.
Robert can xrf get accurate readings on tiny amounts of material like 1 gram/ 1mm in length? Since the atoms are tiny anyways I don't see why like the spectroscout says it needs 15grams to get a reading
@Manager It depends on the device and how the sample is presented. You will get results, but they will need some interpretation. Since much of the exam window will be exposed to air, you should expect a great deal of scatter. What form is the sample in, (powder, wire, turnings)?
@Robert Burton rock samples, little bits of rock basically. They typically contain Al, SI, Fe, Mg, Ca in various amounts. I don't understand why it can't show me a good spectrum when the handheld ones are easy point-and-click and reasonably accurate. Can you explain what "gain" and "flat-top time" are? the amptek xrf you can adjust these and idk how they effect what the spectrum looks like. and they don't have tech support lol
@Manager What model XRF are you using? Are you using PC software (which one) or just the analyzer on-board software? Those samples should be ok. When dealing with rock, and powders in general, homogeneity becomes a big concern. And when dealing with low mass, light element samples, air scatter becomes a big concern. I am an electronics specialist so i am out of my wheelhouse here. And i 've been very ill so it may be a while before i respond.
"Little bit of a crack there, probably due to some mechanical energy input."
In layman's terms, "somebody dropped it."
its quite a fantastic euphemism
I dropped a gun 14k repair
I bet bricks were shat when he saw it fall. An “I am sooooooo getting fired” moment
Haha, thanks for the explanation. I get most of the nerdy jokes, but not all of them ;) I have seen most of the videos on this channel and he must have a huge brain ;)
@Anonymous Armadillo energetic, unplanned, rapid disassembly.
"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
@ISO Guy, yes, beryllium oxide dust and some other salts. Otherwise beryllium is used widely with numerous alloys (copper-beryllium is quite common)...
Silver is a commonly used target in XRF. It produces a 22.168keV Kα line and a 2.983keV Lα line, and fluoresces efficiently at 40kV.
I am not an expert, but it may be that the xray analyzer might need to actually touch the material. Since the thin metal window was recessed into the part, possibly it can not be analyzed. Just my guess...
It could possibly be Ag or any other heavy element, its just have to far away energy level from every day use target elements then software most likely subtract/ adjust the reading otherwise it will show on screen.
@Robert Burton a neat solution to get a finely tuned X-ray source rather than the wide range of frequencies the tube would give out. Further, note the tube beam goes out straight, while the silver, which produces random direction photons, sends those out the window at 45 degrees, ensuring a cleaner signal again.
UPS is very good at accidental "mechanical energy input"
@Hobo Sullivan fedex only does less damage because of lower volume...at least UPS shows up on time.
@dr.rockzo That's what I'm saying. UPS handles every package like it's a box of hammers. But FedEx just outright seems to play football with packages.
😂😂😂
What else do you expect from a company called "oops"?
@Turning Short Final Federal Excrement: "We will turn your package to shit!"
How delightful that it actually makes sci-fi sounds.
It was like someone said 'Can I have a sci-fi gun that makes bleepy noises?'
'Err okay.. We can make it send and receive x-rays, if you want!?'
'Yep, bleeps and x-rays... EXCELLENT!!'
The auditory X-ray warning siren was, and still is a requirement for Canada and Switzerland. If we shipped units there, they had this feature turned on with no ability to turn it off. But if shipping anywhere else, it was turned off by default but the operator had the option of turning it on. And it wasn't generated by the PDA. There is a small piezo speaker inside the analyzer and it's driven by a pin on one of the micros. It had to be done this way to prevent customers from disabling it.
@Robert Burton That's an interesting fact, but I must speak my contention against the concept of a feature that can't be turned off. No such thing exists and a simple swipe of a razor across a trace would prove that, and if, by design, the traces making the sound are integral to the functioning of the device, then one swipe, a couple scratches, and a bit of wire soldered across with the possible addition of a small inductor and resistor would do the trick.
@Atlas WalkedAway I stand corrected. ;)
the ones at my school make no noises.
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.
@TheMrTape
I totally know about Adblock. When used, the video uploader gets less than seven tenths of one percent ( .7% ) of ad revenue. When NOT used, the uploader gets seventy-five percent ( 75% ) of ad revenue. As long as the ads aren't skipped before the fifteen second mark! YouTube gets their twenty-five percent regardless of whether an adblocker is used or not! I choose not to use an adblocking app as my way to support the channel financially without paying for a Patreon subscription, as I am on Social Security benefits and just don't have sufficient funds to do so. I skip ads after the required 15 seconds, but jot down the ad length and admaker whenever the ad becomes abusive in length, i.e. anything over two minutes! Do you understand my stand on that matter?
@Stan Ervin I understand and respect your stance good sir. However it is my belief that running ads, something that relies on manipulating/attempting to control the free thinking of people, is immoral, greedy and incompetent, and furthermore disrespectful to the content in that it delays and muddies the quality of it, and the viewers in that it forcefully takes away some of their time up-front for something that potentially isn't worth it to them, regardless of their consent; I instead believe that what's right is for the content maker to be creative in non-parasitic ways of earning compensation for their work, at the free will of the viewers, in whatever way that doesn't choose/dictate for them, be it donations, selling products/merch or whatever else moral method they can come up with. All that said, content creators today are only paid 16.5% of the ad revenue (contrary to rumors/lies that state a much higher share), revenue of which is already extremely low; averages today go at $0.14 per 1000 views or $0.32 per 1000 views, for <10min and >10min videos respectively. Share has never been 75% (and it has never been anything at all for blocked ads), it has however been 55%, but then Google decided to decrease the share with 70%, so creators end up with 16.5% (in my country most music on Youtube was blocked for 2 months up until 2 weeks ago, because the "governing" body representing Danish artists, Koda, wouldn't accept the 70% decline in ad revenue shared with them and the artists in their new contract with Google; as a result Google announced they'd block all Danish music in Denmark, but ended up blocking most other music as well; Koda finally cracked and accepted; Google had by the way argued that this change was to bring the share in-line with what all other countries was already being paid, so it would be fair to them). A content creator thinking it's a good deal to enable ads and in turn lessen the viewing pleasure/experience of their videos, for 0.0014 CENT per view, is absolutely out of their mind, completely lazy and incompetent; lets say 1 in a 100 do as you do, that means that you give 1.4 cent for your 15 seconds spend before you skip an ad; lets say you spend 17 seconds on average to ensure the threshold is reached, that means your time is netting $2.96 per hour, an impressive 41% of federal US minimum wage, or 25% of average US minimum wage. Now is that really worth it? That's up to you of course. I'd argue that even if you were homeless, you'd be better off installing an ad blocker and pledging $1 to the odd channel once in a while, it'll even out, that would last you 71 blocked ads. As a bonus you'll probably end up netting the creator more, save your time noting down long ad makers, and save your mind from being bombarded and essentially molested with useless information you never asked for. Have a great day kind sir.
@TheMrTape
Thank you for the input. My percentages are off substantially. Haven't researched in over five years. My, have things changed! GreedTube indeed!
@TheMrTape And what about the content creators you never "throw a bone" to? Why should they work so hard to entertain you, for free?
Just let the ads play when you're not watching or listening. In the car, switch inputs to something else while it runs, etc.
@Nigel Tolley I already went into great detail regarding your points. I'm all for creators earning, just not by incredibly inefficient means that waste human life more than it supports. I'm not gonna spend one tenth of a second to let an ad run while doing something else, then switch back to see if it's over, just to earn the creator a measly cent; that's clearly not worth it; it's way better to just donate $5 and not do what you suggest 500 times.
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!
@Seth Coleman That company was Keymaster Technologies. Same company i work for now. We have changed names many times. Before i started it was called Scitech Corp. When i began in 1999 it was C-thru Technologies but we were quickly bought by Edax. Then the venture capitalist company that owned Edax sold off the Edax portion and kept our office, which was renamed Keymaster Technologies. We worked on exactly what you described: brand protection, security, quality control. There's a lot more, but that's as far as i can go here.
@Robert Burton It sure was! I didn't know if it was appropriate to name the company. I had a day long crash course with one of the engineers who came to visit and show how it all worked and then I was cut lose to play with it for a semester of research.
@Seth Coleman Keymaster is long gone. I think i still have business cards somewhere. i loved the applications we were working on, but 9-11 really made people scared of anything having to do with radiation. We can still make calibrations using the Taggant Technology but it is a rare request.
@Kuba Ober It's not high security, but afaik, railway power lines have an "alloy finger print". They often get stolen, so the trace metals added allow a scrap yard or law enforcement to identify where a suspicious offer comes from.
alex4alexn Ah, of course, but given that XRF and other accurate atomic composition measurement techniques are not a new thing, I imagine everyone who isn’t the poor junkie selling stolen scrap metal would know by now :) But given the number of idiots out there, it’s surely possible that people who should know better may be caught that way. We won’t hear about the very few ones that knew what they were doing and didn’t get caught :) Given how silly most people are, I imagine that such atomic steganographic techniques can go quite far if the application warrants it, I’ll give you that.
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.
@Fab Funty I don't know if I and my kids were all nerds, but all of us were fascinated by 'science' and at least a dozen times got in trouble for taking something valuable apart to see how it works, or made a huge mess to figure out IF something would work.
@Richard Smith I know that feeling, I once accidentally "repaired" a really old tube radio from my Grandpa. I wasn't even allowed to touch it, but nobody cared about me at this time. I cleaned it up a bit and like a 8 year old, with the bare knowledge that electricity exist I gave it some wiggle on some parts and put it back together, my curiosity on how it looks inside was cured, then suddenly it start working again and playing very loud. I said I just checked it cause grandpa loved listen to Radio...
he died a few weeks later in believe of a miracle and I kept it my secret, 22 years I told nobody cause nobody would have believed me and because I never repeated the experiment I don't know to this day if I would be a good radio tech. But I still think science is a good invention. 😏
Way way back in the day I worked in photo processing, and I would be tasked with reloading the paper cassettes on the printers. The rolls of photo paper have an emulsion on one side, and thats what the prints are printed on. The ends of the rolls were secured with tape, so we have to load these in complete darkness and we'd jerk the tape off the end just to see the faint glow. This glow was just bright enough to fog the paper, and we would get an outline of where the tape was when the first layer of paper came out of the processor.
@Bacon Sanderson It's fascinating that the glow was bright enough to partially expose the paper!
Peeling masking tape also glows.
The secret ingredient is an HP iPAQ from 2004.
@PGTMR2 my galaxy s6 could do that
@Arthur Mead Galaxy S6 didn't exist in 04
@adfaklsdjf (you realize smart phones are just PDAs with internet, right...?)
Sure, in the same sense that my laptop is one of these with internet: https://youtu.be/CIGjT-RjNbk
@StraightOuttaJarhois I mean.. it basically is? And a battery.
@StraightOuttaJarhois It would make as much sense to say "lolol commodore 64s were so fucking dumb I can't believe anyone thought that was a good idea"..
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!
Thrilling. I had no idea such a portable device existed. Now I need one.
As Used In The Mining Industry , In The Mines To Track What The Chemical , Element , Ores Are In The Mine Walls .
Why Dig And Test Samples When You Can " XRF " It .
Point The Gun , Test Results Are Instantly Available . ( 10 To 20 Seconds )
Rio Tinto , Barrick , NewMount .... Have Them .
Packed Inside A Black Pelican Case And Shipped .
In europe you can contact me. :)
Got to watch out. IMO the XRF market is overrated and overpriced. There are scammers claiming low cost overseas, out to take your money. Even Amptek poses as an inventor while selling devices that were invented in Germany. Lately many other spectroscopy technologies have put pressure on the XRF technologies. Some say XRF can resolve to 1ppm or about 1/10000 percent. I see 500 to 1000ppm as more realistic. Best to read finely powdered samples same size shape integration time compared with known standard samples. Also dope unknown samples with known quantity of a well known metal like Copper, Zinc, or Tin to experimentally calibrate your reading of the unknown metals. The ppm measure correlates with percent weight composition when calibrated in this way. It validates the software calculation via your calibration's "empirical fit or reduction factor". I have seen results that were about 4 times higher than my empirical calibration was able to demonstrate.
@Kha Sh Our model detects Aluminum, absolutely. However EDXRF cannot detect Carbon. For carbon content in aluminum and other alloys you must use another process such as LIBS, OES, or WDXRF. We also make a LIBS handheld. They are all available on our site https://www.bruker.com/products/x-ray-diffraction-and-elemental-analysis/handheld-xrf.html
@Manintoga they still are, at least the good ones.
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...
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.
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!
@Jim Miller Yep. Life dependant stuff.
@Jim Miller 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!
@Jim Miller reminds me of that person who said "I don't trust 'military-grade' anything because it means it's the cheapest thing the government could find."
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? (!!!)
I've got to say, without a doubt, you are the coolest.
Thank you so much for making these videos for us. Seriously. :)
Now I'm wondering if you will use the detector to improve your electron microscope:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-dispersive_X-ray_spectroscopy
If so, it would be nice to talk a little about how the "spectroscopy" actually works with such sensors, how to tell the different X-Ray energy level apart?
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.
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 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.
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!
You find the most interesting subjects. Love your channel & thanks for all the work you put into it for everyone's benefit.
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.
I really wish I had this video during my crystallography class in college... Great job!
@Aaron Thompson humor clearly got list on you 😄
@A A crystallography 😏
They're just a bit pricey. About a "Good Car" pricey. ( https://www.labx.com/product/xrf-spectrometer )
@A A Crystallography is just a minor subject in an Undergraduate Physic courses, so you won't see a study labelled Crystallography, just a "Physics ...". For example: "Applied Physics".
@A A it is different that an Engineering courses because it include 'microscopic' subjects like solid-state physic, and crystallography, and or semiconductor physic, or sometimes spectroscopy, so not an Undergraduate Engineering courses, but more toward a middle ground between pure/theoretical Physic & Engineering. Where the job prospect is not entirely academics.
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.
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.
Nice synchronicity ... I just started experimenting with one of these and this info is definitely timely! Great job as usual!
Great video, thanks. Question : for how long the X-ray tube works? How many measurements you can make with it ? Any data on that?
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.
I'm so exited to know how this work, thank you so much! Edit, it's the most interesting video I have seen since at least a year. I wonder if modern gun can detect the lightest element like hydrogen, and if so how they managed to do it.
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'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!
I'm pretty late to the game on discovering your channel but I've already learned a ton. Thank you for sharing your expertise and knowledge with the hobbyist of the world like myself.
Amazing video! Thank you! Can your X-ray fluorescence gun be used to measure how good a material shields X-rays? I wonder if the instrument could give some sort of average total intensity.
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 love your videos. It's very hard to find such high quality and technical knowledge of such interesting scientific topics.
Fascinating staff! Thank you, you covered quite a few questions I have for last couple decades bothering me form time to time in a background!-)
This is a fantastically fun and useful explanation. How can you not love this channel?
Thank you!
You make great videos.
I like how simple you can explain quite complex processes.
This channel is absolute gold. I'm so happy that something like it can exist.
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
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.
your videos are so good that we miss them as you produce so rare! please do it more frequent.
Most X-Ray devices I've seen actually have grounded anodes and negative voltages at their filaments. The reason is, the anode is usually big and probably water-cooled while the cathode is small. It is easier to insulate a small cathode than a huge water-cooled anode, even if the whole filament power supply has to float at -50 kV. Scanning electron microscopes typically use the same design.
Thanks! I just understood why x-ray diffractometers use a beryllium window. I used to work in scientific computing in x-ray diffraction crystallography mainly of proteins.
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!
Very good breakdown and explanations. Thanks
Doesnt the frequency of the x-ray photon determine which shell the energy will interact with?
Pulse Forming networks used to be huge and hard to stabilize, not any more. That is an impressive marriage of technologies.
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.
Thank you for making these videos! they are always amazing!
bigclivedotcom - 2020-09-10
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.
narmale - 2022-01-13
@Star Dorminey considering how people from the 80s vs kids from the 2000s are coming out? absolutely!
Sedit T - 2022-01-20
@lambdaman You seriously believe products from China are made better than "Value engineered" stuff closer to home. Sorry to be blunt about this but that is rather delusional.
The reality is countries should simply just ban various imports from China because they tend to make trash, on the cheep as they needed to invest zero dollars on R&D and if that was all not bad enough a significant portion totally ignores patent and copyright and it is those products specifically I feel should be sanctioned and removed from the market instead of politicians selling their souls to an overall evil government to line their pockets while ruining the society they live in. China overall is a terrible country and should just be removed from the world stage decades ago.
lambdaman - 2022-01-20
@Sedit T > You seriously believe products from China are made better than "Value engineered" stuff closer to home.
No. That's not what I said. I reviewed what I wrote and I was quite clear. I'm not sure where the misunderstanding came in, but it's not not my end.
Bruce Anderson - 2022-01-22
Prob, huh. I want one, they won't sell me one either...evidently not having money...makes you dangerous?
Lim - 2022-01-23
It is amazing there is so much ignorance in some of the replies. The fact is the products are produced based on the price point you're going to pay. For the same price, the products from China tends to be of better quality. For the same quality, the same products are probably much cheaper from China. When someone pays 1/10 of the price and expect the same quality, the problem is with the person, and not the product or manufacturer.
Is China capable of quality? That is very subjective to different person. But the objective fact is the Country landed a working rover on Mars on THE FIRST ATTEMPT.