Single Line Font?

[squarewave]

I have downloaded this utility and it looks great. I am anxious to engrave an operating panel with switch labels, direction indicators, etc.

Is there such a thing as a single line TTF? Every font I select always gets an outline. I would prefer a just a single line letter. I will be doing very small letters (like .30" high) and engraving an outline of the letter will make it appear very thick.

Any suggestions?

[HillBilly]

When you first open the program up it defaults to a single line font. Just don't select a font.

Darek

[squarewave]

Wow, that was easy. I thought you had to select one. Thanks Darek.

By the way, I sent a private message (PM) to you a few weeks ago. You asked where I was in TN. I am in Winchester, which is about halfway between Chattanooga and Nashville.

Thanks for all of the help!

[HillBilly]

Howdy Neighbor,

I got your PM and just left you a PM.

Darek

[A. Shuford]

A few weeks ago I was looking for a single line font for engraving. Someone told me about Desk Engrave and I started using it. I like it but I seem to be having problems with some of the letter when working with a text height at 0.30". It seems that the letter I (eye) is \ rather an straight up. I also notice that it appears that sometimes the Z axis does not lift off between letters. Is it the font or my machine. I am running Mach2.

[HillBilly]

You should be able to see any discrepancies in the Toolpath window of Mach 2. If the toolpath also shows the I like \ , then the code was generated wrong. Same applies to the Z moves.

Darek

[A. Shuford]

Thanks, I just now realized I had a help folder in Mach2. I saw how to zoom in on the window. Thanks

[HillBilly]

This may need to be in the Mach 2 forum. What I am seeing is plotted right but when executed the two G00 moves in succession are ran as a single line of code, not in single step though. I tried G61 exact stop mode with no difference. I broke the double G00's with a G01 and it executes properly.

(EXAMPLE)
N72 X0.049 Y0.016
N73 G00 Z0.100
G01
N74 G00 X0.308 Y0.011
N76 G01 Z-0.100 F5.0

Darek

[HillBilly]

After exiting and restarting it works fine now (Mach 2).

[A. Shuford]

I think I discovered something that may be interesting to other folks on the forum. Several weeks ago I finished my cnc router and installed an engraving tool on it after testing it with a router. My main ambition was to do small letters with an engraver.

At that time I started looking for some form of stick type or one line font. Someone guided me toward Desk Engrave. I loaded it and thought it was the berries. What I found was that when I exported (small text) as a DXF file and imported it into Mach2, some of the letters were not straight or the Z axis did not pick up between letters. This seemed to happen on text smaller than 0.50" high with a precision of 8. The letter I (eye) would look like a backslash.

I also have a plasma cutter with Flashcut CNC Controls. I exported the file out of Desk Engrave and imported it into the Flashcut Program. It looked ok. Flashcut makes a G code file with a FGC extension. After Flashcut had done the G code, I then imported this fgc file into Mach2 and everything was perfect. The only thing I can think is that Mach2 gets confused on the vectoring of the small font.