Hello,  I started a perforator a while ago that is similar to the
MIDster but was intended to hold several punches for different formats
or to speed the perforating process by limiting the carriage travel.
I never finished it.  I have offered the "as is" unit to a friend who
intends to finish it.  I have also written software to drive it.

The unit can drive as many as 5 punches and works in .001" increments
if the carriage drive is 5 TPI with a standard 200 steps-per-revolution
stepper motor.  The program reads Warren Trachtman's punch MIDI files
and moves the carriage and stepper with the least possible movement to
all positions necessary to punch each row.  I have tested the various
functions but have no idea what the program would do when connected to
a working perforator.  It would be useful to test it on a finished
perforator of this type that needs software or one that is to be
expanded to more than a single punch head.

There are some features that have not been finished but will be added
if the current program is proven to work.  Mainly this would be the
addition of homing and position reference sensing and some sort of
error alarm.  I have added motor acceleration but have only done
testing on an unloaded motor.  I would be interested in hearing from
anyone who has a machine to use this software or who intends to build
one.

Best regards,
Spencer Chase
mailto:spencer@mcn.org