picking a font to modify

I'm thoroughly disappointed by the available free laser fonts. They're all fake/lookalike or paid. I'm going to make an open source font so I can slap-on text without worry. Can I complete it in a week for the contest? Let's find existing open source fonts to modify.

Features I want:

sans-serif
even line width
no extra "islands" like double-storey lower-case "g"
soft edges (the water jet / laser dot is round)

"Neo-grotesque" fonts are pretty good. Single line / Hershey fonts are good.

This paid font really shows what I want. Although it doesn't have any lowercase ...

Open source options

Roboto, the default font in Android. Really good. I like stuff like the dollar sign $ and cent sign which don't have any islands in them (tbh I don't need dollar sign). Capital "R" is a little funny, and the slanted tail on lowercase "a" bothers me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roboto

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto

Open Sans. Decent but a couple things bug me: lowercase "g" has an extra island (double-storey), $ has islands (which Roboto simplified), and capital "J" descends below the baseline.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans

Noto Sans. Decent, really close to Open Sans except the lowercase "g" is simpler.

Hauora Sans. Not bad, kinda blocky and not quite the aesthetic I wanted

https://wcys-co.github.io/Hauora-Sans/

Relief SingleLine. Normally SendCutSend requires closed shapes, but it's not too hard to convert the text objects to Paths in Inkscape. I really like the look of this one and similar single-line fonts such as Hershey Meteorology

https://github.com/isdat-type/Relief-SingleLine

It looks like SendCutSend has a mode to support open paths. Just add it as another layer with a special name. So I may be able to use single-line fonts.