u/Kalekuda

Silhouette only sells one blade type meant for Cardstock: the Premium Blade. It isn't an autoblade, meaning it must be manually adjusted for level, which isn't an issue considering we'd want uniform level anyways for our purpose. They only claim their autoblade can cut about 10 sheets of cardstock before dulling, and that the premium blade is only 3x more durable. 20$ for 30 sheets cut works out to 0.67$ per sheet. Thats more than the cardstock, foil sticker paper and ink combined, which has me rather concerned about the economics of the silhouette smart cutters.
I know there are aftermarket tool heads that address this issue, such as the GB09 and the like, which allow you to buy individual blades in packs for less than the cost of a new autoblade, but those tools don't support auto blade level adjustment and they probably void your warranty given that the cameo 5 alpha tracks what tool you're using at the software level.

How many sheets are you folks able to cut per official blade? How durable are the off brand blades? Whose taken the risk of using the aftermarket blades on a cameo 5 alpha?

I want to cut vinyl sticker holo paper which has been applied to cardstock, but I am concerned about the claims that the type B autoblade can only cut 10~ sheets of cardstock before dulling. That would mean I'd be spending 1.30$ per sheet on blades which is insane.

What has everyone's experiences been with the economics of blades on their smart cutters? Has anyone tried the CB09 or other aftermarket replacable blade systems? Has anyone tested how many sheets the Silhouette Premium Blade can handle? They claim it is 3x more durable for 20$ instead of 13$, but that still means it would be dull after only 30 sheets.

I saw suggestions to print foil proxies via a CYMK printer from the ET series by printing directly onto foil holographic vinyl sticker paper, then carefully applying that sticker paper to black cardstock, cutting into shape and using inners sleeves instead of lamination.

What I don't understand is how does this process produce white images on the card?

ET8550 ~600-700$ USD
ET2803 ~180-200$ USD

From a "quality of the results" perspective, they have the same resolution: 5760 x 1440, but the ET8550 has 48bit color depth compared to the ET2803's 24bit color depth, and ET8550 uses 2 extra ink types to achieve that outcome.

The ET8550 can do larger paper sizes of 13x19inch compared to the 8.5x14inch of the ET2803, but most of the papers used in this hobby tend to be ANSI A or A4 sheets which they both can handle just fine.

They can both, presumably, handle printing foils (https://www.reddit.com/r/magicproxies/comments/1t8bld4/my\_2\_month\_proxy\_journey/) so I have to ask: What is the ET8550 bringing to the table that makes it the gold standard when it's 3 times the price of a printer that can the same things?

As far as I can tell, you'd either need to want the color depth and be willing to pay ~400$+ for it, or you'd need to plan to print huuuuge stuff, but that isn't really pertinent for this hobby. I'm just confused as to how the community decided that the ET8550 or ET8500 were the go to printers? Maybe I'm missing something?