So I played with all kinds of settings in PrusaSlicer. Nothing changed anything.
The only things that did improve the outcome some was:
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Forcing the letters to be printed first: then the letters are smooshed and bleed into the background instead of the other way round, which arguably looks better / more legible. Nothing to write home about though.
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Dropping the first layer's height to 0.1mm (the other layers are 0.2mm high): that improves the letters a bit.
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Dropping the first layer's height to 0.05mm: because the first layer is so thin, it becomes kind of translucent and the wider white letter beneath it sort of show through. The net result is that it drops a kind of gaussian blur onto the lettering, which actually improves them - especially at a distance.
Other than that, there's just nothing for it. And half of the suggestions I got concern other slicers, and I couldn't find them or equivalents in PrusaSlicer. Oh well...
I guess that's as good as it's gonna get.
Good thinking!
In fact, that's what I did first: the markings were on the lids rather than on the shells.
The problem is, because the lids are dovetailed, they're narrower than the shells they dovetail into, so the width for the markings is reduced. meaning the letters need to be smaller, meaning they look even worse on the lids.
I would rotate the text 90 degrees so that it has the full length of the top tab, that should give you more room to work, and most humans can read rotated text.
Another suggestion would be to try a different font that works with the printing limitations: something curved like Exo 2 might be a little less of a fight.
Not an option I'm afraid, as I have to fit two lines of text.
A hyphen or dot couldn't serve the same function as a carriage return here? (Not being a dick; genuine question)
Freecad in the wild! Love it.