Thread: writing text with a cnc router

Mach 3 has a basic text wizard but I don't remember if it has a length limitation. Just about all CAM apps have the ability. Aspire by Vectric is probably the app of choice for many but it's not cheap. They have a trial version that may meet your needs.

Products - Aspire

I believe "Google sketch" can do lettering set into a flat slab

To 3D 5 paragraphs of text in a CAD program , would take a lot of effort , then there are the size , front size , font type , type facing so it looks good , a lot of variables

If you could turn it into a 3D CAD file that you have verified as what you want , some one could run it through a CAM program then CNC the code

There are some programs that can carve the "Black" to a set-able depth off a JPG or PDF , a v bit would probably be best
also MDF is probably the worst material to 3D in a CNC , it screws up the bits 50x faster than real timber

what size ?

also v carved into " malimine "covered MDF , and then painted with water based black paint , and the white malimine sponged clean can result in real professional finish , i think you can load a PDF file in any 2D vectric software such as CUT2D

I've done a fair bit of text work with my 6040 CNC machine text into MDF. Coming from a design background, the text handling of programs such as Cut 2D is fairly woeful in terms of kerning.

If I were doing this, I'd lay out my text in a proper design program (Indesign, Illustrator, Corel) so that the kerning, tracking, line and letter spacing is correct, and do some tests (exporting into Cut 2D to generate the G-Code) to see how different typefaces come out with the chosen engraving bit.

There is one advantage to using the inbuilt text generator in Cut 2D in that the toolpaths are predefined for the inbuilt fonts, and may be more effective, particularly at smaller point sizes. Experimentation is the key.

Do your text in a proper design program, use the 'save text as paths' option when happy (to go from text to vector shapes) and save as an eps or PDF file (whichever your CAD package is happier with)

N00b text mistakes:

'Oh, I can't make up my mind between 'shadow' and 'outline', so I'll use both. And underline and bold, too!!11!'

Widows and orphans

Solid leading

"Look!!1 I used 8 different fonts!!!"

Thanks to every one that replied to my question, there are a lot of great suggestions, I will try the most basic and affordable ones first and experiment with them, before outlaying too much money, hopefully it would be a one and only type of project (with a lot of words etc..)