  The response of particle detectors to different types of radiation is not
necessarily identical and, in some cases, neglecting this behavior can lead to
a misinterpretation of the acquired data. While commercial radioactive sources
are in general suitable to investigate the response to $\beta$'s and
$\gamma$'s, in the case of $\alpha$'s the need for custom-made sources arises
from the intrinsic properties of $\alpha$ radiation, which imposes that the
emitter directly faces the detector. In this work, we show how to flexibly
produce $\alpha$ sources to be employed in multiple studies of detector
characterization. These are obtained starting from a set of primary sources
obtained from the collection of radioactive $^{228}$Ra ions at the ISOLDE
facility at CERN. We illustrate the potential of this technique with practical
cases of application to scintillators and bolometric detectors and examples of
the results obtained so far.
