Single Line Stick Type TTF Fonts For CNC Engraving
ASCII Characters include all of the alphabet, upper and lower case plus
! $ & ( ) + ; : " ' ( ) . ,
The missing are: @ # ^ * _
CamBam Stick Font 9 does include the missing ones above.
For quite a while I have been following the search for "Real" "Single Line Fonts" that are usable in CamBam and other CAD/CAM software. What is needed is a set of TTF type fonts that will load into the C:\windows\fonts\ directory.
I have developed and tested what i think may be the answer, at least for CamBam
engraving. I have a set of 9 fonts that behave like they are TTF but
are truly a single line font set. No matter how large you make them
there will not be any separation of the letter elements. When you use
them they will truly cut in a single line. Your cutter will go over
each letter twice, once in each direction, and exactly on the same path
no matter what size you engrave, even if they are 12 inches high!
You can download them below. There is both a .zip & .rar file. Unzip them and drag and
drop them individually into your C:\Windows\Fonts\ directory. They will
auto install, and because of the name I gave them, will appear at the
top of your fonts list.
In CamBam, when you product the "G-Code"
there will be an error that says, "Error setting new poly start" not
sure what this is caused from, but it does not seem to make any
difference as it has no effect on the resulting G-Code.
I find that using the double cut, going
both ways over each of the letters, gives me a nice clean looking
finished letter. I do a lot of very small sized, 1/4 inch and less, and
always look at the finished cut magnified to see how clean it is. I
also use a very small "bull nose" end mill to do the engraving. Really
makes it come out very clean and smooth on 6061 T6 aluminum that I am
using.
It's kind of a double edged sword, needing to have the
fonts be able to install themselves under windows as TrueType, and still
having them appear to be a truly single line font. All the fonts are
built using a 100% overlap in the font design, which tricks my TrueType
font design program into thinking they are really looped TrueType fonts,
when they really don't have an inside and outside loop.
The following tip from Davek on the CamBam Forum:
I just used a trick I've used before on your fonts. I used
"remove overlaps" on them. A quick look at the G code file and it seems
to not be going over them twice.
Here is what you need to do:
Highlight text
convert to polylines
Make a new layer and make it active
remove overlaps
delete text on original layer (or just delete original layer maybe)
These fonts ARE pretty neat.
Click To Download The ZIP File or Click To Download The RAR File