MakerGear Forum

Does anybody have the Maker Gear logo in an STL or similar format, in the actual font that Maker Gear uses?

Pretty sure the font used on their website is Arial, then made into bold, but not 100%.

That's what came up when I looked at their xhtml source code.

I'm looking for the font that's printed on the heated bed plate, and the stickers. It should be pretty easy to photograph the sticker and use any one of several programs that convert bitmaps to bump maps, though, which should suffice for what I'm thinking of doing. Just checking if anybody had done something like that already, it would save me a little bit of trouble.

Come to think of it, why does Maker Gear use Arial font on their website and not their logo font?

tim, i put the m2 on a few of my parts like the electronics box, e3d cover and fan guards. i am messing with fonts and 2d design software almost on a daily basis and out of 1000's of fonts i have, i could not find a matching one. for either the m or the 2. i have a feeling its not a font and its a drawn logo. perhaps it started with a font and was tweaked to some degree. the m2 i use for my parts is close. it looks similar but a little more crisp with some sharper corners. i can give it to you of you want it. not sure in what format you would like it in and either 2d or 3d. let me know.

That's okay; I think I will go the route with a photo and a bump map. It's a good technique to learn how to do well, anyway.

Well, that was considerably less painful than I expected. Plus, now I know the flow for turning line drawings into STL files. . .

For anyone interested:

(1) I took a photo of the MakerGear sticker
(2) I imported the photo as a background image into xcircuit (a tool I like a lot, because I wrote it. . .), then did a line drawing over the character outlines.
(3) Exported the file as an SVG from xcircuit
(4) Imported the SVG file into Inkscape (if I were better at Inkscape, I probably could have done step 2 in Inscape and skipped steps 3 and 4)
(5) Used the nifty method at http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:14221, which sets up Inkscape with an extension to write OpenSCAD-compatible DXF files
(6) Exported OpenSCAD-compatible DXF from Inkscape
(7) Imported the DXF into OpenSCAD
(8) Compile and Render in OpenSCAD
(9) Export STL from OpenSCAD

Complicated, yes. But it works!!

The attached zip file contains all the files generated except the original photograph.

Looks to me like Sevil alias Esra Lite with a cutout on the A: http://www.whatfontis.com/Sevil-alias-E ... MAKER+GEAR

jsc wrote:Looks to me like Sevil alias Esra Lite

Interesting website link, that. . .

Yes, pretty close except the cutouts were presumably made so the letters can be made into stenciled outlines, which is good, since that is what I had in mind to do with it.

Fortunately, they allowed some artistic license in the use of the number "2" in "M2". Much better choice than the one in the Sevil font!

Tim wrote: (if I were better at Inkscape, I probably could have done step 2 in Inscape and skipped steps 3 and 4).

Here is a link to tracing bitmap in Inkscape. It's a really helpful and fast tool for what you were trying to do.
The traced bitmap can be saved as a .DXF file from Inkscape, then imported to your CAD.

http://youtu.be/i-xxhphybnE

It's a really helpful and fast tool for what you were trying to do.

Thanks for the link. I wrote xcircuit, and it does everything I need to do and I have no incentive to learn another program to do the same thing. If anything, I would save steps by writing an OpenSCAD-compatible DXF export routine for xcircuit. . . But, most other people are (undoubtedly) unfamiliar with xcircuit and will find it easier to start with Inkscape. As far as I'm aware, that extension posted on Thingiverse makes Inkscape the only tool that will readily produce OpenSCAD-compatible DXF files.

Unfortunately it happens to be true that incompatibilities between tools and file formats is probably the biggest hindrance to 3D design right now. It's made worse by the fact that the most commonly supported file format is STL, which is truly just about the worst file format imaginable for describing 3-dimensional data. DXF isn't getting any praise from me, either. . .