How to cut out texts as if you handwrite
This project was inspired by the “handwritten letter cut out” project posted by Atommann. I highly recommend you check out his recently two project posts, they are amazing.
The key is to create single path cut outs.
Single path letter cut out looks so cool, it feels like the texts are written onto the material by some very supernatural force. It is ideal for making placard, greeting cards or similar applications.
In Atommann’s post, he traced an existing picture using Inkscape hand-drawing tool with DS curvature set to 40. It is very advanced technique and requires a lot of trial and error to make it perfect.
After realizing the difficulties, I start to search if there is a simpler way. I found out Inkscape have single path font pre-installed. It hugely decreases the workload but comes at a price. I will show it later.
Let’s say we want to make a farewell gift to a friend. We start with drawing a rectangle cut out
Drag onto the second dot on top right corner to round the vertices. This little touch makes the farewell card looks more professionally done.
At this moment, we can first turn the rectangle Shape into Path, by selecting “object to path”
Then, we can select the textbox tool (big T) and put the text box in the middle of the rectangle. Key in the words and wishes you want to present.
Then, with the text box selected, go to “Extension” > “Text” > “Hershey Text”
Select the font you would like to use. Hershey’s fonts operation does not have live view in Inkscape, you may refer to this website or the following screen shot list as a reference to choose your font.
After selecting the Hershey font, the text will turn into path / vectors directly.
However this does not mean we can use the path to cut as is. Some “cleaning” is needed.
Firstly, we need to make sure no enclosed path. This is counter-intuitive for WAZER cutting, because in all other cases, enclosed path is a must. But in this case, enclosed path means the internal of the lettering will be lost. For example, the two internal features of “B”, and that of “e” will be lost. You will end up with big opening that does not look good.
Think about how stencil is shaped, would help you a lot in this case.
I address the stencil problem by moving the middle section of “B” slightly outwards, and repeat the same on letter “e”
Then, we combine the two paths: rectangle and letters. Save the file as SVG
This is what it looks like when the svg is loaded into WAM. The rest of the operation will be about the cut settings.
This is what the g code is visualized. You can see all the letters are single path.
Well, apparently the letter “B” and letter “W” need some fine tuning. But the rest of the texts are amazing.
Let me know what you would like to make using this technique.
