Thanks. $300 isn't much for us but I understand how it could be for others. We bought ours on sale in November from Craft Warehouse in a bundle pack for around $250 (and also ended up getting a free Hot Shot embosser as well). The plan was to sell our Cricut Expression afterwards with all its extras we'd acquired. It sold quickly for $200, so we ended up with a net expense of only $50. (At the time, there was no plan for using this with Pepakura although I did know that the Cameo could cut any vector image and any TrueType font from a computer rather than only stock items from expensive cartridges as the case with Cricut - hence the reason for switching out the machines.)
We got Silhouette's latest model, which is called a Cameo. I don't know a lot about it, as it "belongs" to my wife and she's only been using it for less than 2 months (without reading the user manual). (I must say she's a little annoyed at my "invasion" of her territory using the machine for cutting out Halo armor parts…)
You said that you only had it cut and went over lines yourself with pen. But is it also a printer, and if not could you take a sheet that has been printed on and have it cut that?
I never said I went over the lines myself with pen. The Cameo does the ink work for me as well as the cutting. Although the Cameo is a cutter, not a printer, you can purchase a pen holder that drops in where the blade would normally go and then any graphics or text will be "drawn" using whichever color pen is loaded instead of cutting. The pen holder (which is a jig that holds pens much like the way a Christmas tree stand holds a tree trunk) is only if you want to use custom colors, as Silhouette also sells pen sets that can be inserted in place of the blade unit. So I'm coming up with a system where the Cameo draws the mountain and valley fold lines (for visual purposes only - these aren't actual scoring as I'll explain why in my tutorial after getting all the kinks worked out for you), then lightly scores the cardstock with the cutter, and then cuts the parts out. The pens aren't near the resolution of a decent printer, but since I'm not using the ink for anything critical (anything that affects how the parts are assembled) it works out fine. (One thing that's nice about the pens is that the "printing" is actually drawn using a pen, so it looks hand-drawn but with robotic precision. It's noticeably different than inkjet or laser printing.)
Yes, you can load printed cardstock into the Cameo, but you'll have a heck of a time aligning the cutter to the printed artwork. That's where printed registration marks come into play (the Cameo scans for these before cutting if you enable that feature). This also makes for a 2-step process though: a separate print step on the printer, then a cutting step on the Cameo. I opted for a simpler approach after getting too frustrated with all the hoops Tamasoft makes you jump through using their $15 software. (It's a good thing a demo was available because after using it I would not recommend it.)
When I compare the time spent scoring and cutting with how much is left to do on my son's costume and the price of a Cameo (which was already purchased for other projects), it's really a no-brainer to leverage it for Pepakura. A tutorial will follow after I ramp up on the machine's abilities and get all the settings worked out for you (blade depth, pressure setting, cutting speed, etc). I plan on pointing out the pros and cons for different cutting methods in the tutorial, as I've walked multiple paths before choosing one that offers a decent compromise between cost, simplicity, speed, and accuracy.
