Are any fonts a true single line vector?

[John L]

I am making a small engraved plastic sign. I design with Flexi and toolpath with Aspire.

I have a bunch of fonts on my machine that are designated "engravers fonts" by their names. i always thought they were fonts made up of a single vector line (not a filled stroke) so that an engraving machine or router can drop on the vector line and follow it around the letter, then lift out. Well I was wrong. These things that I have are all just like autocad fonts in that they are made up of many single vector lines but they are just segments, not a "point A to point B" line. That is, a capitol letter B is made of four straight line segments (which is fine for my purposes) but the radius parts of the B is dozens of little curved segments.

When engraved using my cnc router, each of these segments will result in a tool lift which I do not want.

Are there any true single line fonts for this? Quickly obtainable? Something I can do in Flexi?

My old pen plotters used to do it but I can't wrap my brain around it now. Help.

Thanks.

 

[300mphGraphics]

The last project I had cnc plasma cut I use 1CamBam_Stick_9 which was a free font I found online.

 

[BBworks]

In Flexi
Select fonts or lines and then select Arrange>convert stroke to outlines.

 

[John L]

Should have said.. I did try that already. I also experimented with welding. Have tried with several fonts that look like single line. No luck.

 

[John L]

300, Thanks for the response. I actually have downloaded all of the 1CamBam series and am getting the same results whenever I try to toolpath ihem.

My standard here is that i lay it out in Flexi. Convert to curves. Export it as an .eps file. Then open the .eps in Aspire.

 

[skyhigh]

Hi John,
I'm using the same 2 programs, and haven't had the problem you speak of. I export out as a dxf file and open that in Aspire. The only strange thing I've found, is I usually get a double set of the outline overlaid over the other (if that makes sense). I just delete one, and I'm good to go.

What font in particular are you using?

 

[skyhigh]

My standard here is that i lay it out in Flexi. Convert to curves. Export it as an .eps file. Then open the .eps in Aspire.

When I export as an ai or eps, then "import vectors" in Aspire, the file opens approximately 10x larger than I had it sized in flexi. Example, a 5" letter will open in Aspire as a 50" letter (just a guess. I never actually paid attention to the imported size. Its just BIG).

When I export as a dxf, life is good (except for the double line)

 

[John L]

Hi John,
I'm using the same 2 programs, and haven't had the problem you speak of. I export out as a dxf file and open that in Aspire. The only strange thing I've found, is I usually get a double set of the outline overlaid over the other (if that makes sense). I just delete one, and I'm good to go.

What font in particular are you using?

THAT, my man seems to work. Thank You!!

I am using a font called "1cambam stick 1" but it was doing it with any stick font I tried.

I suppose something was awry with my conversion to .eps. Thanks again for opening my eyes.

 

[John L]

No double line either... all good. Thanks.

 

[Bobby H]

I don't think any fonts exist in a standard format (TTF, T1, OTF) that feature single, open path lines.

A long time ago I used Neon Wizard, which featured some proprietary single stroke "neon" fonts. But it wasn't a very user friendly application and the guys who actually make our neon always wanted to make other adjustments, etc.

For the past decade I have taken the approach of deconstructing letters from a certain font using CorelDRAW and turning them into single stroke neon lettering. It's not too difficult to do. It just involves various anchor point editing tools. Sometimes the blend function and path direction tools will be involved for creating true center line strokes while maintaining original letters.

It's easiest to perform the single stroke deconstruction technique on letters with very thin widths, such as Gotham Thin or Helvetica Ultra Light. Just a few edits on each character and you're done. Obviously this is going to take more time than just typing out something already in a single stroke.

Scripts tend to be the biggest pain, especially if you're setting them into a small space. Often I'll just draw that kind of lettering by hand to get a proper balance of distance between each stroke. I'll scan the sketch and then digitize a single stroke path of it using Photoshop's pen tool. Export it to Illustrator, scale it to the proper size, set the stroke to proper width (like 10mm or 12mm) expand stroke and it's pretty much ready to create a neon paper pattern. The telegraphics path area plug-in can compute path lengths, which is handy for determining transformer requirements.

 

[skyhigh]

John, have you experienced the sizing issue I have, when importing eps vectors into Aspire?

My board size is the same in flexi as aspire, and the imported vectors will be blown way larger than what they were in flexi.

 

[John L]

Actually no Sky. Other than this font issue, I have opened thousands of Flexi-saved .eps files (both text converted to curves and also graphic shapes/designs) and never had a size change at all.

I'm still on flexi 8.1. I just select the item, file, export .eps. And then I just open that file with Aspire 2.504.

I do usually draw a "known size" box around whatever i am exporting from Flexi just to keep an eye on things when Aspire opens it. Aspire gives you the drawing size when you open the file, if that matched my known box size drawn, then I am all good. I just delete the box as first business in Aspire.

Not sure what else to say about that one.

 

[Techman]

Are those single line fonts that come in Aspire actually single line fonts? They seem to be just that. I have not tried to use one yet so I am not sure.
Yes? No?

 

[John L]

I would bet they are. Actually all of the single line fonts I had been trying before were fine... just as long as you dont export as an .eps (for whatever reason, as an .eps they break out into individual segments). They all work fine now.