When I first started doing rolls for Bam-Bam Music Rolls, I experimented
printing the words using a dot matrix printer.  I bought a Panasonic KXP-
1123 specifically because it had a 11.5" paper path and could accomodate
the roll.  To print the lyrics, I would totally unwind the roll, and then
feed the roll through starting at the end of the roll.  Thus, the lyrics
would print on the right side of the paper in the proper location.

The printer was controlled with a Qbasic program that I wrote.  Since the
roll was cut on the Tonnessen's perf which runs around 523 steps per foot,
I used the BASIC program to send codes to the printer which would let me
advance the paper by 1/72 of an inch.  Here are the issues I ran into:

  (1) It is slow!  25 feet of paper is like printing 26 pages on a dot
matrix printer.  Sure, there are only 15-20 words per page, but it is
still time-consuming.

 (2) You have to worry about the paper skewing left to right.

  (3) The wax paper of the roll is slippery and you are relying on
friction to keep it going through.  My experience found that after 25
feet of roll, the lyrics became mis-aligned by 2 inches.  Thus, if the
lyrics started on the tracker bar, by the beginning of the roll, the
lyric was at the top of the spool box.

  (4) The D-Ring at the front of the roll will *not* fit through the
platen of the KXP-1123.  Thus, you either need to roll the roll back
through, or order the roll without the end-tab installed and attach
the end tab after printing the roll.

I've seen the QRS high speed stencil machine put the words on their
rolls in about 2 seconds.  The dot-matrix solution is painfully slow,
comparatively.

By the way, I remember one conversation I had with Bob Berkman at QRS:
He remarked that he would like to use the dry wax paper that Richard
Tonnessen uses, but the ink from the high speed stencil machine smears
terribly on that paper.

Bill Jelen

 [ Editors comments:
 [
 [ I think PlayRite Music Rolls still uses a variation of the "alcohol
 [ conversion" technique for offset printing; the ink is quite volatile
 [ so that it dries quickly, and on the waxed paper the appearance is a
 [ watery green.
 [
 [ By the way, I'm sure that QRS or the Tonnesen's could perforate
 [ good-quality rag paper at extra cost.  It could then be taped to
 [ sprocketed paper for precise registration in the printer.
 [
 [ A 24-pin dot-matrix printer would nicely print _graphics_ images
 [ (bit maps) of the lyrics after the image is rotated by software.
 [ Richard Tonnesen makes rolls for me with annotation text "punched" in
 [ the paper trailer; the skewed and rotated text is generated from the
 [ bit-mapped image of a 7x9 (12-pt) font.
 [
 [ Robbie Rhodes