CamBam - Tutorial : Text Engraving

Inserting Text

To insert text into a drawing, use the Insert->Text menu option, then change the text properties in the object browser.

Multiple lines of text can be entered by clicking the elipses [...] button to the right of the Text property.

The text properties are:

Location (P1)	This is the first and at the moment, only alignment point.   The TextAlignmentH and TextAlignmentV options are all relative to this point.
Location2 (P2)	This point is not currently used.  The intention is to use it to define alignment options that evenly spread the text between two points, or perhaps as an alernative to the Rotate option.
CharSpace	This option scales the width used for each character.  The default is 1.  A setting of 2 would double the space used for each character (but not the character itself).
LineSpace	This scales the distance between each text line.  The default is 1.
Font	This is the font name to use for the text.  For a bit of fun, try clicking on this option, select a font, then use the up and down arrow to try different options.
Height	This is the text height in drawing units.  I have had some issues with this and at the moment, I have used height as relative to the height of a font capital (ascent??).  I'm not convinced this is correct yet, but it is on the list of things to 'look at'.
Rotate	Angle in degrees to rotate the text about the alignment point (Location).
Text	The text to enter.  To enter multi line text, click the [...] button after this property.
TextAlignmentH	Left, Center or Right (relative to Location).
TextAlignmentV	Top, Center or Bottom (relative to Location). NOTE: Bottom is actually the baseline of the text.   As per DXF I may add other options to differentiate absolute bottom and baseline.
Bold	Bold Font Style.
Italic	Italic Font Style.
Regular	Regular Font Style.
StrikeOut	StrikeOut Font Style.  Not currently supported.
Underline	Underline Font Style.  Not currently supported.

Creating Engraving GCode

To create some engraving gcode, select the text then select the CAM->Engrave menu option.

For shallow engraving (0.3mm), try these properties:
ClearanceZ=1.5, TargetDepth=-0.3

...And "blow my bike up!", as Grandad would say...it even works !!!

Not exactly high art, but the letters are quite small (3-6mm) and plywood isn't the best precision engraving material but at least CamBam and my machine are playing together nicely!

To create thin engraving, ideally a 'stick' font should be used, that is a font with no thickness.   One that I am aware of is Camworks.ttf; this looks nice on screen, but the resulting toolpaths are pretty awful (using my awful non-optimised gcode generation code at any rate).  Any recomendations for nice stick fonts, preferably in the public domain, would be extremely welcome.

NOTE: I tend to use Metric and CamBam was designed with Metric in mind, but it does support imperial units.  For information on changing the drawing units, see the getting started section.