The search for true single line font sets goes on⦠(They can be scored instead of engraved, which is a HUGE time saver when you have a lot of text to process.)
Good news - thereās a way to make them happen.
Bad news - itās very limited for a couple of reasons.
First, the only way Iāve found to make them work with Illustrator is through Rhino, which carries a fairly hefty price tag. If you have access to a student or teacher, you can buy the student version fairly inexpensively, but itās priced well out of the range of most hobbyists. I wasnāt able to find a reliable freeware alternative. The only other option I saw cost just as much. (EngraveLab)
Second, there are very few true single line fonts available out there. Most of the ones that list as hairline or single line fonts actually have doubled up segments that laser twice or three times in the same place⦠makes for a very rough looking font when itās lasered.
Quick and dirty explanation for this - Most TTF and OTF type fonts rely on closed paths - itās just a function of the drawing programs they tend to be used in. Closed paths are created with a vector path on either side of the filled line that you see. Itās not really a single stroke, so you get double burning when you have a laser trace around a filled closed shape.
In order to correctly express single stroke fonts as curves, you need to take them into a program like Rhino, which will correctly express them as a single stroke, not a really skinny filled rectangle.
In Rhino, be sure to turn on Curves in the Display, and select the options shown below when you are typing your text:
Once you have typed out your text in Rhino, you can save the file as either an AI file or as a DXF file. Either one can be brought into the drawing programs and converted into an SVG for the Glowforge to use.
Okay so like I said, I tested a bunch of supposedly single line fonts, and the only (free) ones that actually are single line that Iāve found are displayed below:
These will actually just run once over the letters.
e-engraving.com Is For Sale Orach Technic
Engraving Fonts for Rhino [McNeel Wiki] MecSoft
Wish List item: SINGLE STROKE FONT - #12 by sochin - Rhino for Windows - McNeel Forum Machine Tool
And the results:
Took about two minutes.
Update:
Whoops, I forgotā¦as mentioned below, there is a Hershey font set available in recent versions of Inkscape.
To access it, go to Extensions > Render > Hershey Text.
The font set is created with segments instead of curves, so itās going to load with a lot more nodes than the others shown above, but it might process adequately for small jobs. (Havenāt tested this one.)
Anyway, itās another option to try.
Update 04/22/2021:
Speaking of which, there are now a couple of new candidates that @jbv and @jestelle have located that look extremely handy: