PocketMagic

Here's a new DIY homemade Geiger counter that uses a highly sensitive pancake tube, the russian CI14B.
My goal is to get a counter for low energy radiation like the soft X-rays, but also alpha particles.

I got the geiger tube fro Ebay, at a reasonable price.

		I'll put some better schematics photos soon.

Next thing to do is to build a high voltage regulated power supply and a counter or at least a clicker. It needs to run on battery power for portability.

Update September 04, 2010
It appears the tube CI14B is damaged so I cannot use it. The problem is that the tube cannot recover from a ionization event, and produces avalanche-like discharges, triggered by an initial exposure to radioactive material. Probably this is due to over voltage applied to this tube (notice the corrosion near one of the electrodes in the first set of pictures).
However I still want to finish this project, so I've purchased two additional tubes:
CI-12B, the smaller brother of CI-14B, another pancake tube but with lesser sensitivity.
CI-1, a standard Geiger Muller tube.

To be continued...

By Radu Motisan

July 12th, 2010 | Tags: dosimeter, geiger counter, pancake geiger tube, sensitive geiger tube, si14b | Category: Electronics, Hardware, High Voltage, Nuclear |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL