Making the hi-tech very, very low tech...
As many of you know, I am, rather terrifyingly (*), a scientist. Part of my job involves building and maintaining x-ray beamlines. As our beamlines are all designed for a specific experimental purpose, we often buy off the shelf x-ray generators, optics and flight tubes, but design the sample chambers, detectors and analysis software ourselves.

And we couldn’t do this without the help of one of the most useful pieces of lab technology known to man.

Blu-Tac. Helps us locate the sample in the sample chamber at differing depths.

Other surprisingly useful bits of kit involve a cook’s blow torch (good for preparing sealed glass capillaries), a hairdryer (for what we rather grandiosely call “thermal cycling”) and my favorite, my custom made polymer punch. This is for punching very small (about 250 micron) holes in slabs of polymer, to connect tubing into. It’s fashioned from a pin vice, a biopsy cutter (to cut the hole), the plunger from an old syringe (to push out the piece of cut polymer from the hole) and the spring from a clicky biro pen (to make to whole thing spring loaded and easy to use). I also have a selection of diamond drill bits I bought from a dental supplier, they're really really good for making very small holes in glass without cracking it.

Sometimes my job is ace.

(*) Seriously. I combine the dexterity of a stunned ox with a flagrant disregard for common sense and a generous side serving of utter stupidity. Realistically, I shouldn't really be allowed to use scissors without adult supervision.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 10:12, 10 replies)

Bluetack
This stuff is wonderful, just doesn't leave it in a high vac line and then spend days searching for the leak when the system doesn't pump down. the 'tak outgasses forever.
( speedyballbangpots, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 10:43, closed)

Is there anything to be said for copyrighting your inventions?
Surely you have competitors would be envious of your ingenuity?
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 11:14, closed)

^ I agree
You do seem rather good at this inventing malarky.
But if you were to Patent anything then normally because you'd 'invented' it at work it'd belong to your company. Which sucks.
(Evilweevil is covered in bees, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 12:05, closed)

Sorry...
....but I was lost by the third sentence.

But I bet you are very clever and a nice person to boot.
(Colonel Blink is now officially a pretentious prick, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 12:59, closed)

I know exactly what you mean
My work involves firing lasers at stuff in order to grow layers of crystal for more lasers. Most of the time the kit's held together with tin foil and broken bits of o-ring.
(Concrete Cow, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 13:33, closed)

Hairdryers
are one of the most useful things you can have in a lab! Along with WD40 and blue roll, it seems!
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 15:52, closed)

Where on earth
do you get ahold of "off the shelf" x-ray generators?

I *want* some.
(Scritty Bakerman., Wed 26 Aug 2009, 19:08, closed)

Off a shelf
somewhere?
(Sir Tainley Barking Ezekiel 23:20, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 20:18, closed)

I read that phrase
without batting an eyelid. X-rays are simple to generate, at least on a basic level. All you need is a source of high energy electrons and something to bash them into, such as a piece of metal.

You can use a reasonably simple vacuum tube to do it.

In practice, you'd actually use some sort of particle accelerator to generate x-rays, and you can buy 'table top' versions of them too!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 27 Aug 2009, 9:29, closed)

K2K6
is, as ever, correct.

You need a high voltage box, which are easy to get hold of, a source of electrons (think the tungsten filament of a light bulb), a target, such as copper, which you bombard with the electrons, ultimately leading to x-ray generation, in our case, as a copper K alpha line. It's deceptively simple and there are specialist companies that will sell you the required kit (for a huge cost) which you then custom buid your optics, detectors and sample chambers into, depending on what it is you're trying to measure.

Or you can use a particle accelerator. But that doesn't tend to fit on the bench quite as snugly.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Thu 27 Aug 2009, 10:56, closed)