I seem to have a problem trying to engrave small text on a stereo chassis's front and back panels. The text should be rather small, around 3mm high is the general size. The problem is that all fonts create a letter outline which is too small to pocket with any reasonable size bit. A reasonable solution would be a single line font that could be followed using the centerline tool. As far as I know, that doesn't seem possible with Sketchup. I suspect I could create the letters from scratch using Sketchup's line tool but setting up the guidelines to do this properly seems exceptionally labor intensive. Any other ideas on how to do this more effectively would be appreciated. Thanks, Roy
Hiya If you have not yet, please watch this Now, for such small text I would use an engraving bit, maybe 15 or 30 dregree point (I think the ones I have are 30) and instead of pocketing the letter I would set the outline to a 'centerline cut'. There are single line fonts available for download....just google it.
Thanks David, I knew that I needed a font that could be cut with a single line but I didn't know that it was a widespread problem that had been solved by engravers in the past and easy solutions existed just a google away.
I just tried this one Single Line/Stroke Fonts (for cnc engraving)?? • sketchUcation • 1 and will try these sometime... CamBam Stick Fonts Things is that TrueType fonts cannot actually be single lines, they have to be a loop. That is the TT definition. So that first link gives you a font where the inside and outside lines are very close together, but there are still two lines where true engraving only needs one.
Dave, I had loaded CamBam Stick Fonts just before receiving your new post. They are a little hard to see in the 3D Text Menu Box but they seem load and work OK with SketchUcam's Centerline Tool. Unfortunately, I am going to need a better bit before I try running this.
