Incised Lettering

Incised Lettering

Inscription

Lettering

Alignment

Lines

Click a line, or its number in the margin, and its tools appear beside it. Drag it to move it; it snaps to the panel centre, margins, guides and the other lines (hold Alt to move freely). The arrow keys nudge it 0.1 mm, or 1 mm with Shift. Drag the handles at its ends to spread or close its letters.

A blank line is a spacer, shown as a dashed band: drag its bottom edge to make it taller or shorter, or click it to type its height.

Word stops

Small incised triangles between words, cut like the letters.

Put a stop between words

Point

Kerning

Click the gap between two letters and its spacing controls appear beside it: move them closer or further apart, everywhere that pair appears or in that one gap only.

Keys: point at or click a gap, then Alt+← / → closes or opens it 0.1 mm (add Shift for 1 mm). Tab and Shift+Tab step to the next or previous gap.

Group and pair kerning are kept with the alphabet, so they apply every time those letters are typed, in every job. One-gap kerning stays with this job.

Even up spacing

Set one reference pair to look right by eye. Every other pair is then matched to its space, allowing for round, straight and diagonal sides. Suggestions are only shown: nothing changes until you accept them.

Reference pair

Measuring the space

With Space between letters shown, the space only counts so far into open letters such as E, C, F, L and the mouth of G. The green dashed lines show where it is cut off.

Fit to a width

Stretch or squeeze a line to an exact length, end to end, by opening or closing its letter spacing or its word spacing.

Fill by

Width mm Height of the block mm

Both start as the space inside the margins. The height is used only by "Fit every line", from the top cap line to the bottom baseline.

Kerning groups

Letters whose side has the same shape are kerned together. Each line is one group: change its letters, or clear them to remove it. A pair kerned on its own overrides its groups.

Board

Panel

Width mm Height mm

Panel to the lettering size the board round the lettering and margins

Lettering to the panel scale the lettering to fill the space inside the margins

Border

In from the panel edge mm Gap between the lines mm Depth of the scribed line mm Width of the cut mm

Margins

Top Left mm Right Bottom

All four sides mm

Reference picture

Put a photo of an inscription, a rubbing, a drawing or an alphabet sheet behind the layout to trace or match. Scale it to true size, line it up, then lock it.

Check the screen scale

Hold a steel rule against the screen. The bar below should measure exactly 100 mm. If it doesn't, nudge it until it does. This makes True size really full size, and the screen remembers it.

Marking out and G-code

Marks out the letters with the 30° V-bit: hairline, datum line and valley slit (see the brief). Zero is the top surface of the stock.

Stock thickness mm

Pass 1: hairline Pass 2: datum line Pass 3: valley slit and forks

The G-code can only be saved from the preview, once every pass has been looked at and every check is passed.

Every file starts by raising the bit, then pauses with a message to start the spindle by hand. Nothing moves until you press Resume. An air cut is the same file run clear of the board, the deepest point 5 mm above it, for a dry run.

Depths and safety

Safe floor mm Chisel angle ° Slit margin mm

No cut goes deeper than the stock thickness less the safe floor. The slit stops the slit margin short of the true valley depth.

X0 Y0 at the panel's

Front is the edge nearest you, with the board on the bed reading the right way up: the bottom edge on screen.

Datum line

Follows the thick and thin. It stops where the stroke is too narrow to fit a line each side.

Bit, speeds and depths

Bit angle ° Bit cutting depth mm Spindle speed, set by hand rpm Hairline depth mm Hairline feed mm/min Datum depth mm Datum feed mm/min Slit depth per pass mm Slit feed mm/min Plunge feed mm/min Lift between cuts mm

Starting values for oak from the brief, to be fine-tuned by test cuts. The spindle is run by hand on its own speed governor; the file never switches it on or off.

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