Relief and text on a model: what prints legibly

Raised or engraved

Raised text (emboss) stands out from the surface, engraved text (deboss) is sunk into it. The terms are described on Wikipedia, and the general article on relief is also on Wikipedia. Raised text on a top surface looks bold and prints well, because the printer only builds it up. Engraved text needs precise layers and can blur at the edges.

What sizes work

What decides it is the 0.4 mm nozzle and the 0.2 mm layer height. A line thinner than about 0.8 mm does not print reliably.

• Letter height. At least 5 to 6 mm, smaller is hard to read.
• Stroke width. At least 0.8 mm, better 1 mm. Thin serifs get lost, so prefer a sans serif font.
• Relief height. At least 0.4 to 0.6 mm above the surface, that is 2 to 3 layers. For engraved text the same depth applies.
• Direction. Text on the top face comes out cleanest. On vertical walls the outlines of the letters step by the layer height.

When designing a logo or a nameplate, start with larger text and shrink it in steps. If a letter is made of lines thinner than 0.8 mm, thicken it, otherwise it may print incompletely.

Colour of the text

The most common question is how to get the text in a different colour. It can be done with multicolour printing: send a 3MF in which the text is assigned another colour. Every colour change adds a purge tower and time, so the price goes up. The alternative is raised text on a single-colour part, which you can paint yourself, but we do not paint parts.

When ordering

Convert the text to curves in your program or embed it right in the model, so the font does not change. For a logo or a nameplate it is sensible to order one piece first. Check the sizes of details against the entry on smallest feature.