Text to STL — 3D-Printable Name Plates, Signs, Keyring Tags & Stencils

1 Type your text

Font Every font installed on this computer can be used — type its exact name below if it is not listed. Or type a font name Left blank, the list above is used. Style Bold is worth trying first — it is the simplest fix for strokes that come out too thin. Bold Italic Alignment Only matters with more than one line. Letter spacing 0% Line spacing Multiples of the text size.

2 Size it and check the strokes

Blue is what gets printed. Red marks strokes too thin for your nozzle — they will be in the STL but your slicer will quietly drop them.

Text height Measured on the letters themselves, not the font's invisible box — so 20 mm is 20 mm in any font. With more than one line this is the height of the whole block, so each line comes out proportionally smaller. mm Text width Untick "size by height" to drive the size from the width instead — useful when it has to fit a specific space. mm Size by heightOff sizes by width instead. Proportions are always kept. Minimum stroke width Two extrusion widths — 0.8 mm on a standard 0.4 mm nozzle. Anything narrower cannot be printed. mm Simplify Drops outline points on straight runs. Higher makes a much smaller file; too high and curves start to show facets. 0.35 px

3 Pick a style

4 Result

Getting lettering to print

Thin strokes are the whole problem. A slicer cannot print a line narrower than about two extrusion widths, so it drops it — the letter comes out with pieces missing. The red marking above catches that before you waste an hour. Fixes, in order of how well they work: make the text bigger, set Bold, or pick a font with less contrast between its thick and thin strokes.
Fonts with fine serifs and script fonts are the usual casualties. A geometric sans — Arial Black, Impact, Verdana Bold — survives at sizes where Times or a handwriting font falls apart.
Loose letters really are loose. Without a plate, “OPEN” is four separate objects that will scatter across the bed. That is right for fridge magnets and wrong for a sign.
Stencils need bridges. The middle of an O or an A is only held in place by the paper in the original drawing. Cut it out of a plate and it drops out — the tool tells you how many pieces would fall, and stencil fonts avoid the problem by design.
Letters raised 1–2 mm read better than letters raised 5 mm, print faster, and are far less likely to be knocked off. Contrast comes from painting the top face, not from height.
Need curved text, an outline around the letters, or lettering wrapped onto an object? Build the flat version here and take it into the 3D Designer.