Simple Text Font & toolpath

[RICHARD_MADDOCK]

I’m looking for a way to do text as single lines/curves like Autocad RomanS. I don’t want it to “fill” or pocket the area within the character, just a simple single line/curve. I’m doing a sing with a lot of text on HDPE Black/White/Black.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

You will need to set such text in a 3rd party program and then import it.

For a work-around see:

Alternatives to single-line fonts

One work-around for a single-stroke font is to inset the text. Given a text in a font which is close to being mono-line: [image] convert the text to curves: [image] Draw in geometry at the narrowest point: [image] And then inset: [image] [image] Apply [image] and then apply a No Offset Contour toolpath: [image] [image] Attached as a v7 file carbide3d_single_stroke_alternative.c2d (140 KB)

[mhotchin (Michael Hotchin)]

The font ‘Zniko’ is not single line, but is instead extremely narrow. Doing a No-Offset Contour on that font works well. Since it is not single line, you can use it like you would any other font in CC.

Fonts for small letters

Another approach is to use a single line (‘stick’) font, and use a small endmill. Good stick font seem to be hard to find, and most software doesn’t work well with then because they don’t have an enclosed area. BUT, a font I have used in the past that ‘emulates’ a stick font is the oddly named ZNiko font, available here: It’s actually an extremely narrow font, so you can just do a contour cut on it using an endmill and it looks like a stick font. Here is a dog show prize I made - the ‘bone’…

[45rpm (John Clark)]

I use the Hershy Text plugin and Inkscape for this:

https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/hershey-text-an-inkscape-extension-for-engraving-fonts/

I think it’s included in Inkscape now. Inkscape saves as SVG which can be imported into Carbide Create.

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