Best font for routing text in aluminum

[ferrari77]

I’m trying to CAD up team number and some text in Solidworks and then route it in aluminum. What is the best font to use for this? A font that has no floating sections and such so it looks good once its routed. Or is there a better method for me to use for this?

[Andrew_L]

Comic Sans. I’m not joking, it’s technically one of the best because of the rounded corners and wide letters. It looks terrible, but by definition it is one of the easier fonts to route out. I suggest finding something different, though.

[ferrari77]

Yeah I’m looking for the name of one of those fonts that looks very industrial and teams frequently use to route their numbers/names.

Something like this

[ClayTownR]

Most teams should just draw the letters themselves. If you don’t feel like that, write whatever font your team logo is and add the fillets manually.

[apm4242]

IWe use Agency in bold. It’s one of the few with a connected number 4. then we fillet all the inside corners to the bit radius and outside corners just enough to prevent them being sharp.

Although you might have a problem with the 6…

I’ve seen teams put a solid bar though the center of the number/letter to prevent cutouts. Like the O’s in Robonauts -

[Sam_Russell]

This is no joke, I use comic sans all the time when routing lettering with my cnc.

[snoman]

Look for a stencil font. Or you can manually draw in webbing in almost any font. A stencil just has it done for you.

[TheFlash]

This is a pretty good font
/s

[pkrishna3082]

This year on our robot we used the Death Star font for a vaguely Star Wars look. The characters are very distinct and have large stroke which is nice. Used it on our frame cutout, up the sides of our elevator, and with custom vinyl stickers for our bumper numbers. I manually added the supports and fillets for the parts we cut into aluminum.

I would recommend finding a font you like that has a decently large stroke size. Then fixing it manually by adding supports for floating pieces and filleting sharp corners. You will get a much better selection of good font options.

edit: the parts in question

[OverFound]

Bank Gothic all the way man

Robototes

[itsYoshi]

Counter Strike font is what I use

[dirtbikerxz]

Agency FB. Had to manually insert a solid bar through the center of the 6 to prevent a cutout.

[AriMB]

We used Adobe Illustrator to create the text and then imported it into Solidworks. You can use whatever font you want, then manually round edges, add bars to connect isolated segments, etc. Would certainly recommend to any team that has access to Illustrator.