The trick to cutting the roll with a laser is to elevate the paper
above the honeycomb and diffusion plate.  It is important that only one
sheet is cut at a time.  This is possible due to the speeds involved.

What does not seem to be realized is that the laser process is
predominately mechanical.  The transport under the head still is moved
with stepper motors.  In effect, a laser cutter is no more than a
mechanical X-Y plotter.  Another alternative would be to have some sort
of acidic ink that eats a hole in the paper.  Again the real issue is
the mechanical transportation of the paper through the device.  Burning
a hole through a sheet of paper could possibly be something simple
enough for one of those Edmund Scientific Co. lasers one sees
advertised from time to time.

As noted in other parts of the discussion thread, the actual cutting
is negligible, especially when compared to the costs of the paper.
(Unless one wants to use surplus off-season Christmas gift paper,
and even then I suspect the price per pound is way up there.)

In my personal case, I schlepped cross-country several rolls of paper
that Mike Kitner had; this will keep me in paper for some time.  This
is not including the stencils which are on some sort of Kraft paper.
The paper "webs" I have are marked as being food locker paper or
"freezer paper."

Xerox does make a high-end laser printer machine, the DC-70.  My job
prior to this one was programming that beastie.  It is a "web" based
laser printer: there are four toner systems that cross the continuous
web.  I was going to grab a few of the extra short webs, but missed
getting them by a day.

Someone who really wants to experiment with replication could contact
a printer that does color brochures called tr-folds using a four-color
process on a web press.  This is a calendered paper process using a
paper with a high clay content and long fiber that does not shed too
much dust.  The "wax" in the printing processes is actually a
composition of paraffin and clay (and may also contain gutta percha,
which is un-vulcanised rubber).  This is also called sizing.  I think
talc, chalk or gypsum is used for whitening.  This is all pressed
together under calendering rollers.

This paper may work for short runs for the home enthusiast to be able
to archive favorite rolls.  Before we shut down the project, I was
starting to look at different paper types and catalogs.  Note that
Inkjet and plotter paper does have many of the properties we want as
far as smoothness and fiber shedablity.

The water absorption of paper was something we tested at Apple
Computer.  That department was an easy target for the bean counters.
Note that paper shrinks as it goes through the printer, due to the heat
of the fusing process.  My job at Apple was testing that the margins of
the start point were in tolerance to the laser start point.  We held
the accuracy to 24/600 which was about 4 mm from the edge of the paper.
The actual printed resolution was about 1/4 of 1/600ths, but not all
points were addressable.

Put it this way: On the last laser printer Apple shipped (a wide-format
A3 printer) I signed my name, and the name of the team, on the demo
page hidden in the halftone screen at the above resolution.

As I have noted from time to time, I have and have indexed Mike
Kitner's collection of book music masters.  (Unfortunately copyright
issues make it difficult to make this generally available, as I had
wanted to; there is a lot of Chiappa and Verbeeck music here.)

What I want to point out is that these book music masters wander about
the page.  This makes it difficult in the scanning process as the
master was imprinted at an angle to the edge of the paper.  It seems
that Mike would create a fixed edge on a long table that he had.  It
does amaze me that he had the patience to punch the sixty thousand or
so holes that a typical tune takes to store the music.

The perforated masters seem to be made of sections that are about the
length of the table, 10 or 12 feet long.  The unused masters seem to
have a few inches of margin.  Even with this there are places where the
image wanders off the paper.

What does this have to do with roll replication?  Only to point out
that the technical issues of the actual music perforation are not the
issue.  Actually, the issue is how does one earn a living so as to
afford the 60,000 US$ per annum overhead of the taxes and fees (rent,
power, etc.) that a business is expected to produce in this day and
age.  And I am not speaking of myself.

Julie Porter