Laser CHOP won't render dots and dashes from Script SOP
disclaimer: i tend to over-explain so i used ai to help keep this concise.
I'm working on a laser segment for a live show. I'm using a Script SOP with a Hershey-style single-stroke font feeding into a Laser CHOP → Laser Device CHOP → Etherdream. Most characters project fine — the galvos trace the strokes cleanly. The problem is punctuation, specifically periods ( . ), dashes ( - ), and slashes ( / \ ), which don't show up at all.
The Hershey geometry for these characters is either a single point or an extremely short line segment. The galvos skip over them regardless of step size or blanking settings — every other character works fine.
What I've tried:
- Tuning Pre Blanking On Delay — helps with letter completeness overall but doesn't fix the missing characters
- Increasing and decreasing Step Size — no effect on the missing characters
What I'm considering but haven't tried yet:
- Replacing dot geometry with two short crossing strokes to give the galvos something to actually trace
- Adding a minimum stroke length check in the Script SOP and padding anything below the threshold
- Using a dwell point approach for dots instead of a stroke
Has anyone solved this or something similar? Is there a standard approach for rendering very short or single-point geometry reliably through the Laser CHOP, or do I need to pad the geometry in the Script SOP to make those characters large enough for the scanner to catch?