Wow. I think that's the coolest thing I've seen all day. I guess I could ask one of the security guys to x-ray stuff for me but I think I'd rather not be known as the crazy flashlight dude around here. :D ;)
Very interesting. I think that's the first time I hear about this. They used to x-ray your feet? Yikes. I imagine Marie Curie must have been spinning in her grave.
That's one of the reasons why I love BLF. I learn something new and interesting every day. :)
Some questions, are there two pcb connected by solid/rigid connection in 7?
What's with the spring around the battery?
Are the white parts in the first photo the "hard to pass" material (hence hard to see mbpcb)? If so it's interesting that it passes through a battery.
I havent opened up the driver yet physically (which is why I took the radiograph) and Im tempted to say that the connection between the top and bottom PCB appears to be a rigid connection.
The spring around the battery is the electrical return wire for the tail switch. The switch at the tail is just your normal tactile switch (think switches on front panels of your LCD screen). This means its not a current carrying switch (thus im happy to XM-L mod this torch).
You are correct, the white = what the x-rays cant pass through.
Radiographs are normally developed white (clear film), and the places which the x-rays hit the film become darker. So where its white = where no x-rays hit the film
Foy needs an integrating sphere and a radiograph thingy.
Foy
Tried to order one from Amazon, even through the other seller, they are out of stock. 
If anyone would have an xray machine--DX would for probably less than 30 bucks. :bigsmile:
Even a dentist can use a good flashlight 
, ask him for an xray of it to show him how well made it is 
or offer him the making of your third teeth.
The Xray above looks like the film my dentist is using .
Well.. that is a dental film!
Should try to use a bigger film... See more of the torch. That was just a standard size film.
Doubt a modern dental x-ray machine would have the power to penetrate a flashlight - they are pretty low power devices - as in I'd be happy to sit in the beam for hours. To penetrate a solid lump of aluminium takes more than the 50-70kV (at a very few milliamps) that dental x-ray machines produce.
30 years ago I worked with a guy who got into x-ray crystallography in the 1940's. He was able to tell me about x-ray burns from personal experience (They are very nasty, they burn from the bone out) - he'd worked in the beam line of a million volt device capable of burning holes in wood for years before it was found out that x-rays were dangerous. He didn't have fingers any more - he had ten tumours instead.
Yeah, it does seem strange to me that the x-rays can pass through the aluminum, but manage to get scattered by the pcb which is just fiberglass, and the wires, both of which create contrast. Maybe it has something to do with focus or molecular structure.
The fiber-glass appears to have a similar radio-opacity to the aluminium, can see pretty much through it. Interesting though, as you mentioned how their similar, I too would have expected the aluminium to be more radio-opaque than the fibre-glass
The copper, lead and SS are stopping the x-rays pretty well though, and that makes sense as denser metals.
Focus shouldn't be relevant in this context? the radiation is a point source about 12" above the torch and plain film.
Ah, point source. I'm more familiar with other medical imaging like ultrasound which use complicated arrays and focus. :)
Taking my light to the hospital for a cat scan .
30 years ago I sold cameras in a great little shop. Our specialties were exotic used stuff Sinars, Alpas, old Rollieflexes, Contaxes and Leicas. As in rare and frighteningly expensive. I still have an 80 year old Leica IIIc somewhere in the attic. I think. I once borrowed a Leica 250 for a week just to play with it. Here is one sold on ebay recently for a very suspiciously low price. I'd expect to have to pay ten times more. I suspect the advert has been very, very carefully worded. I strongly suspect it didn't actually work at that price. Around $10,000
Anyway - we sold more new Leicas than anywhere else in the UK and as a result we got the right to buy several of the gold-plated 70th anniversary specials.
A year or two later a Japanese collector of these things came to buy one of the gold-plated ones. The price of his first class flight from Japan to he UK would have bought a 3 bedroom house in Edinburgh at the time.
But apparently it would have destroyed the value to have broken the seal on the box to check if there actually was a camera in the box. Let alone the camera that ought to have been in the box. So he made an appointment with the local general hospital to have the box x-rayed (At a cost that would have bought a new high-end Nikon) to check that there actually was a camera in the box. Incidentally, the radiation dose it got would have rendered it non-functional. Ferranti (Who made the electronics in it - the camera was actually a not all that good clone of the Minolta XM-7. The optics were rather better though) never were very good at hardening electronics.
Having satisfied himself that there was actually a camera in the box (Even if it wouldn't actually work any more), he paid an utterly eye-watering price for it. As in the flight was cheap in comparison.
There are some collectors I will never understand. I'm certain that 30 years later, the box still has never been opened.