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Western Europe Making paper punch chards - Help needed

Covers: Germany, France, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco and Liechtenstein
A

acorn_1401

Experienced Member
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Mar 1, 2023
Messages
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South UK
Might sound a very silly idea but has anyone ever tried to make their own paper punch cards? if so how did it work out? any issues to over come? ideas of weight of paper/card to use?

The idea would be to user a printer to print onto card 3 outlines of cards then use some method for cutting them out, then sorting the edging.

lets be clear it is not ideal and not professional. but beats paying £4 +p&P for 5.

failing that where to actually get some unused punch cards for a fair price.

I am looking for the IBM 80.
 
Al Kossow said:
more than you ever wanted to know here
the short answer is it is special card stock. the closest still made are time card punched cards
Click to expand...
Al,
I think in Europe at least we still have airline boarding cards which I believe are punched card stock and punched card size. I recently received one recently in respect of a guide dog but I don't seem to have kept it to check with the micrometer.
Dave
P.S. I did look at getting some made but finding suitable paper/card was very hard. None of the common weights are the correct thickness.
 
Yes. After doing ptap2dxf I started on pcard2dxf using the same technique, that is, using a home vinyl/stencil cutter to knock out Hollerith cards. Still a long way to go and it wasn't a high priority against all the other projects in my queue.
 
1944GPW said:
Yes. After doing ptap2dxf I started on pcard2dxf using the same technique, that is, using a home vinyl/stencil cutter to knock out Hollerith cards. Still a long way to go and it wasn't a high priority against all the other projects in my queue.
Click to expand...
I guess I could put a cutting blade in a plotter and slice them out that way...
 
I was thinking having a thousand or so so that if I was going to make a program or two with them it doesn’t take me to zero.
 
Wouldn't using someone with a commercial guillotine paper cutter be the most expeditious? Print shops are usually equipped for that and can probably order the correct stock for you.
 
Possibly and not discarding print shops but having spoken to a few local per card it worked out to be 35p a card. A small 200 card program would cost £70. Ideally it be 5p a card and mistakes don’t matter as much. Small learner programs or showing a group of kids something fun with a short run becomes within price range.
 
I mean if you had access to one a laser cutter with an alignment jig will cut perfect holes, or you buy correct weight sheets of paper and cut entire cards and the holes at the same time.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Apparently continuous tractor-feed cards are still available. Appear to be the correct size.
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Continuous high speed printer data labels are designed for use on all pin-fed tabulating and data processing equipment. Each features a 50lb smudgeproof face stock on easy-to-remove backing, are continuous-feed and fan-folded.

Think these are adhesive backed for guaranteed jam. Where's my card saw?
 
It is good to see them still making similar card stock. Tho still 20c per card and as Dave said not including postage.
 
NeXT said:
I mean if you had access to one a laser cutter with an alignment jig will cut perfect holes, or you buy correct weight sheets of paper and cut entire cards and the holes at the same time.
Click to expand...
I have no history with laser cutters and my only question would be does it scale? - How long would it be to cut out (with the right edging) per card? then how many cards per sheet. If I'm looking for 2000-5000 that might take a while if its only 3 cards per sheet
 
Surely, there must still be time clocks in the UK needing cards. In any case, a North American collector may also want a bunch of these for himself (herself, itself) and can simply post a couple hundred to you. May even qualify for Media Mail rates...
 
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Hello,

I've got some UK IBM cards, although all used - i.e. got holes punched, bits of barely legible code (ALGOL I think) along the top edge.

The card says 'Mfg in the UK by Dataset Limited, an ICL company' or something like.

I tried looking for something called Dataset. There are businesses here called that, but don't seem to be quite the right thing.

When I was at Uni, back 1969-72, I sometimes hung around the computer centre, fascinated by what was going on in there, where THE computer was, served by folks in white coats, protected from real people by barriers, locked doors, etc. Some of my friends WERE doing computer stuff, so I got my hands on some used cards. I was doing Modern History & Politics, so I had to wait a while before I could play too, but I made up for the delay big time.

Within the computer building there was a room that I could get into, I assume it was where people prepared their stuff for submission. A number of tables, and one of those IBM 029 ?? Card Punch machines. I had a play with that. Somewhere I've got a card punched with my name.

Geoff
 
I was part of a volunteer recycling crew at CDC Sunnyvale in the 1970s. The recycling outfits paid good money for the cards and paper and it wasn't unusual to collect a few tons during the week. Card and paper stock back then was high-quality virgin pulp., so high prices were the norm. The recycler kept a large container on-site, so it was a matter of collecting the stuff from the waste boxes outside each office and then wheeling it down to the container and unloading.

The ship really hit the sand when the Sierra Club (recipient of the funds) held a special awards dinner for us for our $50K/year donation (that would have bought a nice house in Sunnyvale in those early days). Of course, the employee activity fund wanted a hunk of it, and we said fine, our volunteers will collect every other week. Of course, they couldn't find enough volunteers to stay after work 5 days a week to collect, so the whole thing fell apart and the company ended up contracting to an outfit to perform the collection, so that nobody got anything.

Ants and grasshoppers, anyone?
 
HI, Since we appear to be talking about recycling now, I was instrumental in starting the recycling of punched cards at our company (Mellonics) in Sunnyvale. I was a computer operator at the time and noticed we were simply trashing the used cards. I got an OK from the company to save and recycle those cards. It was not a tremendous amount and I had to take them down to San Jose for recycling. We were able to make enough money the first year to fund the company picnic. I think we would have about 300 - 400 pounds of cards (they are heavy). Thanks for bringing back that memory. Wasn't CDC in Palo Alto? We bought their 1604 for our data center where I worked.
 
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