A Californian Youtuber has built a fully functioning X-ray machine because he is fed up with the US health care system.
Youtube content producer Will Osman has taken medical treatment into his own hands after he was hit with a $69,000 bill for treatment that included antibiotics and an X-ray.
The majority of the bill was covered by insurance, but Osman was still left to pay more than $2,000 for the minor procedure.
“I avoided surgery, but they still billed nearly $70,000,” he told Popular Mechanics following his treatment.
It took months to acquire the materials needed to build the DIY X-ray machine, but Osman put-together the device in a mere couple of days.
Despite the machine looking like a literal cardboard box, somehow, the device functions without issue. But just because it works, doesn’t mean you should make one too. People study for years to safely conduct an X-ray, let alone build the machine that makes them possible.
Osman started by building the glass, X-ray tube, which he achieved by wiring an old dental X-ray head to his own high-voltage power supply.
“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.”
We’re not going anywhere near that thing, but still, all power to him.
