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New member asks about Paper tape reader/punch

mubase

Plastic
Joined
Mar 18, 2016
Hi all. My name is Steve and I live in London. I am an audio repair technician and audio/computer/electronics DIY enthusiast.
I recently picked up not 1 but 3 paper tape punch readers. They are Siemens T1560 models. Made in the mid 1980s, they are RS232 standard 5 hole machines. I have repaired 2 and have one more to fix. I did this without a manual as I can't find ANY info on the internet about these machines.
I would like to ask if ANYONE has heard of the Siemens T1560 Paper tape attachment. They are long, off white colour and use a GNT36 as the punch and a Ghielmetti FER203 as the reader. I want to convert one of them from 5 hole to 8 hole. If anyone has one of these machines or a manual I would love to know.
Thanks for any help or interest,
Steve.S London (UK.)
 
No help to you, but I'm trying to imagine what these could possibly be used for? I used then in the early - mid seventies as a crude communication device but as soon as a pc with a serial port came along, didn't these become dinosaurs? Is this just a hobby ?
 
Tape readers and punches need to be preserved for posterity !

Many a CNC machine has it's original parameters issued as an oiled paper tape and is the 'ultimate back up'. I have them for my Fanuc 6 based Fanuc Tapecut Model M EDM machine, and aso for my TX8F controlled Traub TND350G 5 axis CNC lathe.

I have two paper tape readers myself - Facit 4070's.

When I worked for Ferranti decades ago we used paper tape frequently as a test program media - tape readers were ICL TR6's and GNT XXX - don't remember the numbers. Later systems used the Facit 4070.

If you need 1" paper tape I have cornered the worlds supply in a big pile of boxes :)
 
Tape readers and punches need to be preserved for posterity !

If you need 1" paper tape I have cornered the worlds supply in a big pile of boxes :)

And I have a couple of boxes of yellow/green mylar worth 15X as much as your paper tape (basically zero these days).

Perhaps you and I could have a garage sale?
 
No help to you, but I'm trying to imagine what these could possibly be used for? I used then in the early - mid seventies as a crude communication device but as soon as a pc with a serial port came along, didn't these become dinosaurs? Is this just a hobby ?

Ok, I now officially feel old and obsolete.
What do people use to make bags of confetti for football games now?
I suppose you also don't still have your boxes of punch card decks in the back room from when you wrote your first FORTRAN compiler. :)
Still some old machines out there running that need a tape to load the basic brains into them and they won't "get" a serial port without it.
Bob
 
No help to you, but I'm trying to imagine what these could possibly be used for? I used then in the early - mid seventies as a crude communication device but as soon as a pc with a serial port came along, didn't these become dinosaurs? Is this just a hobby ?

do they make cool noises when punching the tape?
 
Presumably you know the encoding scheme of the actual holes. If so it would seem to possibly be easier to build a reader with some IR emitters and detectors and an Arduino board or suchlike. Especially if you could reuse the mechanical parts to run the tape. Maybe I'm missing something...
 
Wow all these cool replies!!

If you need 1" paper tape I have cornered the worlds supply in a big pile of boxes

Hi Andrew, thanks. I've got 2 full rolls of 8 hole tape at the moment. 1 pink and 1 blue. Still working out how to get the machine to punch 8 hole data though. I've set the tape spring guides in the punch mechanism to accept 8 hole width paper through the tape guide which wasn't too difficult as I have a pdf of the punch manual (GNT36). I also have about 3 rolls of 5 hole tape. I'll definitely keep you in mind though. I want to repurpose the machines to play sounds as part of a sound art project my partner is involved in. On the main PCB of the machine are 2 sets of rainbow coloured dip switches (8 each). I'm guessing that 1 is for baud rates and am hoping the other has a switch that sets either 5 hole or 8 hole punch...

No help to you, but I'm trying to imagine what these could possibly be used for? I used then in the early - mid seventies as a crude communication device but as soon as a pc with a serial port came along, didn't these become dinosaurs? Is this just a hobby ?

It is kind of a hobby. I've always loved electronics and computers and as I grew up using a ZX81 I've got pangs of nostalgia for older systems so love these. :)

Still some old machines out there running that need a tape to load the basic brains into them and they won't "get" a serial port without it.
Bob

Tell me about it. I've got another machine made by IOMEC which has a date stamp of 1974 and is the punch mechanism only. Its a small black grille box with the punch on top and it has no interface. Fascinating thing is there's no motor. Its all run by solenoids!! Even the sprocket wheel! I'll post some pics as its a really nice piece of machine tech.

Have you contacted Ghielmetti to see if they can help?

http://www.ghielmetti.ch/

Regards,

DB

I did a few weeks ago but no reply as yet, I've also sent one to Siemens obsolete....

Presumably you know the encoding scheme of the actual holes. If so it would seem to possibly be easier to build a reader with some IR emitters and detectors and an Arduino board or suchlike. Especially if you could reuse the mechanical parts to run the tape. Maybe I'm missing something...

The encoding system is 5bit ITA2 code (Baudot). I've found a couple of windows serial terminals that can communicate with the machine. The shift codes work nicely. :)

You're ahead of me! One of the machines looks fairly beaten up so I might take off the reader and punch and motor and hook them up to an arduino. The reader wouldn't be too much of a problem as it could be strobed for read/no read quite easily but the punch would require a litle more research and planning...

Thanks for the show of interest!! Oh, and as this is a machinist forum, I've worked in the past as a bench presser, a hole stamping machine operator for Phillips (when they were in Croydon)and on Urban machines cutting upvc frame parts for window frames. The job I'm in now involves soldering irons, multimeters and oscilloscopes. :)
 
I don't recall ever seeing a Siemens tape reader/punch in this country. More popular here was the DSI NC2400, of which I have one. A few years ago I almost gave it away..... but a few days before shipping it I obtained a Maho CNC mill that has lost parameters....which had a roll of punched tape in it's electrical cabinet.....which was the needed parameters ! What a pisser that would have been if I shipped that DSI off a few days earlier !

Surprisingly, Maho had their backup parameters on punched tape as late as 1991. I had an 1989 Deckel CNC mill w Dialog 11 control in contrast that had it's parameters on standard floppy disk.

Tape Punches, Switch Boxes, CNC - Punch Cables, RS232C, USB

(scroll to bottom of page at above URL so see DSI punches)

DSI NC24 Paper Tape Punch/Reader Duplicator - YouTube
 
Try this for loud. Teletype Model 15 1 Hours - YouTube Teletype model 15 5 level this machine typed roll paper.
other models typed out paper tape. The 28 series were also 5 level they ran at 100 baud. The model 33 was the first with 8 level hole punching. They were using tape control on embroidery machines back in the 60's. I almost went to work for a company repairing these things. They were after me because I used to rebuild the 28 series of machines and sell them.

John
 
You're ahead of me! One of the machines looks fairly beaten up so I might take off the reader and punch and motor and hook them up to an arduino. The reader wouldn't be too much of a problem as it could be strobed for read/no read quite easily but the punch would require a litle more research and planning...

Ah I missed the punch part. That would be a cool project but a bit of a journey into obscurity if you were doing it as a work activity. Still, you'd get a good maker DIY video out of it. It would be great if you could use almost all of the original electromechanical parts and just redo the electronics, but I'm sure you're thinking along these lines already. Good luck!
 








 
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