Hi All,
I need to find a tungsten foundry or a source for tungsten sheet to make some radiation shielding for a prototype PET scanner. The head of the program has decided not to use lead and has asked me to design and build the shielding. We want to use the tungsten alloy with the highest density that is economically available. From my research so far I believe we will be using one of the K18** alloy's but I'm not sure if magnetism is an issue for us or not. The energy level we are using is 511 KeV.
The problem that I am running into is that we only need a handful of pieces and no one that I have talked to so far seems terribly interested. I need 8 elliptical strips with a length of ~26" and a width of 3.5" to 7.5", the thickness will be .25" for four of the pieces and .094" for the remaining four pieces.
I realize that most tungsten parts are formed by powder metallurgy and that would probably be best, but, we do have a high-quality water jet available so if I have no other options and I can find sheet material we can make the parts here.
Any help or suggestions you can give me on a supplier or material selection would be greatly appeciated.
Thank you in advance, Dave Wilson