Ampico 206781 Fond of You - Laser cut roll

Here is a quick video of a laser-cut copy of Ampico Roll 206781 - Fond of You (see the earlier video on this channel of the original roll). I just used the phone microphone, so not the best sound.

Anthony Robinson (Salisbury, UK) has been making precision scans of piano rolls for many years, and converting his scans (and scans made by others) into top-quality punch master midi files. These files are designed to control traditional mechanical perforators, and will produce one-to-one copies of the original rolls. Anthony has kindly offered me files from his huge library
of Ampico punch masters. I selected this one, since I have an original roll to compare the laser cut roll to. Spencer Chase’s MIDI-to-Gcode software converts punch master midi files to the gcode instructions used by the laser cutter.

I could not ask for better results from the laser perforator. At the end of the video are some shots of the the perforator cutting this roll, the PC running LaserGRBL showing the cut pattern and gcode commands, and some photos of the cutter without the exhaust hood. And at the end is a side-by-side photo of a section of the original roll (with lyrics) and the new roll (brown paper).

This latest iteration of the Spencer Chase-designed perforator features powered feed and take-up spools (as suggested by Spencer) controlled by microswitch/paint stick (thanks to Lowes) paper position sensors, and a fully-supported paper path through the perforator. All of this is to minimize the drag on the paper as the Y-axis motor moves the paper back and forth while cutting.