With the recent variable fonts technology, the type design field is currently in a boom, but strangely the rapidly democratizing domain of fab labs is hardly approached by type designers. The existing offer (both commercial and open-source) of single-line fonts is very basic and the majority of these available typefaces are qualitatively deceptive (irregular drawing quality, poor spacing, no kerning, etc.). Simultaneously, typographic tools dedicated to CNC usages (such as Hershey Text Inkscape extension) are truly limited and the drawing quality of the proposed fonts doesn’t match current typographic standards. Nowadays there is still a critically small amount of “single-line”, “single-stroke” or “central-line” fonts optimized for fab labs CNC machinery, allowing the use of letters based on a single central line.

Existing CNC mill & laser typographic tools Relief SingleLine typeface is an open-source project available for download and use following the Open Font License ( OFL). Relief SingleLine with its skeletal logic and parametric thickness can also be useful in print and web experiments. Relief SingleLine is the first single-line font running on Adobe apps (CC 2019 and above) with kerning and opentype features. Relief SingleLine provides a single-line path for a pen, laser, or milling tool to follow for an efficient and clean looking typographical rendering. Relief SingleLine is a versatile sans serif “single-line” font with open paths oriented towards CNC (Computer Numerical Control) engraving and fab labs environments.

Inkscape laser cutting font