Welcome to Jon Singer’s Mirror of his Joss Research Institute pages.

The Joss Research Institute is [was] a scientific and technical research organization whose mission is to conduct innovative research, primarily in the fields of ceramics, ceramic coatings and glazes, optical coatings, and lasers and their applications.

In general, JRI’s three main goals are:

• To provide useful, objective information to the public and to conduct research.
  
  
• To represent the findings of that research in the appropriate publications to ensure ease of access for future researchers.
  
  
• To ensure that research is used for the public good and to encourage the continued scientific and technical exploration of lasers and ceramics.

• Lasers
  
  
• Ceramics
  
  
• An irregular set of Research Updates, to which I add from time to time.
  
  
• Subsystems:
          Vacuum
                  Diffusion Pumps

• Inexpensive and easily-constructed nitrogen laser designs for reasonably high performance; (see this design, for example)
  
  
• Building an organic dye laser and a doubled-Nd laser that will be suitable for pulsed holography, and building a power supply for a surplus “M-60” ruby laser, also for pulsed holography;
  
  
• Making holographic films and plates for that project, because commercial ones are too expensive to waste on the learning curve;
  
  
• Reproducing some Song Dynasty glazes with modern Western ingredients;
  
  
• Figuring out how to use the colloidal gold pigment in high-fire glazes; (appendices B-D to my Ceramics Technical article are here)
  
  
• Developing fluorescent glazes [mostly using "rare-earth" elements]; (See my article in Clay Times magazine)
  
  
• Developing microcrystalline and macrocrystalline glazes;
  
  
• Developing extremely translucent porcelain formulations and glazes for them;
  
  
• Developing flameproof clay-body formulations and working up some novel applications for them;
  
  
• Converting a second old electric kiln to gas [I’ve already converted one old electric, which I use for reduction firings, but it is very small. See this page for information about it];
  
  
• Building a small electric test kiln, and bringing a surplus electric test kiln online;
  
  
• Trying to create blue roses [this is, if I may make an understatement, seriously nontrivial; I doubt that I’ll succeed, but it’s a lot of fun to try];
  
  
• Trying to build a small R/C Platz-Gleiter (possibly powered) and perhaps also a small electric-powered R/C boxwing aircraft.
  
  

Please note: I am continuing work on various of these projects on my own. Please see my research pages for writeups.

Email: a@b.com, where you can replace b with joss, and a with my first name (no “h”; only 3 letters, as it appears in the URL).

My phone number is +1 240 604 4495.

Last modified: Thu Jan 10 23:00:12 EST 2019