I think you are looking for Hershey Text in Inkscape. I don’t remember where it is located, I think under raster. But it is a true single line path. I use it with a 30-degree v-bit and just adjust my depth until I reach my desired letter thickness. Also helps clear chips for crisper looking letters.
When you carve text in the manner you describe does it make a single pass for each line, or multiple passes? I have never seen a case where Easel will carve a line as a single pass (single movement), but that seems to be what you want for the cleanest engraving.
BTW, I’ve tried using V bits for engraving, but they always seem to tear up the edges badly. A very small ball head works much better for me.
Yes, I saw that, but he later said not to use it, as there were problems with it, and he apparently never fixed it. However, a “vector line font” is exactly what I believe the CamBam font is, but it doesn’t work because Easel seems to be incapable of dealing with such lines - they have to have a width and that width has to be greater than the width of the bit. In other words, Easel will never carve a line as a single pass - it always takes at least 2.
I could do my project with the “txt” font (or perhaps “Hershey” - I haven’t tried that yet), but I don’t like either of those fonts. There does not seem to be much selection within “line fonts” and even within that small group some will work with Easel and others not.
I think that is only true because the original shape had a non-zero width, but with the CamBam font it really is zero width.
On the other hand, Inventables Tech Support is telling me that a zero-width line “usually” carves as a loop around the line (when “on-path” is selected). I’ve sent them an example project where this is not working.
You might want to try this Java-based command-line tool:
In case anyone is still following this thread. I can confirm using Hershey text on Inkscape, saving as optimised.svg, and importing into easel works to cut a single path font. Hit me up if you’re still having troubles.
Has there been any further development with Easel to allow this kind of carve?
I’d really like to be able to pick a simple font that would be cut via its center line in one pass. As said in this thread, I don’t want to outline, or cut inside, or fill. I want to simple carve a single bit width centered on the text line.
I’ve messed around in AutoCAD today and found a way to “work around” (would love a way to just have Easel use a few “single line” fonts):
- Select any of the single line text styles: avant.shx, cdm.shx, dim.shx, hand.shx, iso.shx, simplex.shx (there are more)
- Create your text object(s)
- WMFOUT and select the text object(s)
- Erase the original text object(s)
- WMFIN that file you just created
- Explode the block
- DXFOUT the file
Import the dxf into Easel and adjust size, stretch, rotate etc.
hitting you bro
Yep it does work. Gotta select and highlight the whole text. Awsome. Thank you
I was searching for single line fonts and came across this method for creating single line text in Illustrator by rasterizing the text and then using image trace to create line art. I’m just about to try the resulting svg file on the x-carve.
I was able to test this technique over the weekend and it works very well. The letters benefitted from a small amount of clean up in the SVG file before sending to the X-Carve. The cuts were clean and the letters look great.