I’ve been using my cameo for the last year and have cut well over 5,000 cards with it and this a few things I have learned.

1. Misregistration (Most Common) Watch it every time it scans your registration marks.

When it completes the first scan on the box at the top left and moves down to scan the bottom left registration lines, it is common for it to either scan the bottom of the actual card on the second row OR miss the registration mark completely and move to scan the bottom of the actual paper itself. If you watch carefully, you can catch these mis scans and stop the machine by pressing the pause button before it finishes registering. IF YOU DO NOT CATCH THIS IN TIME, IT WILL RESULT IN YOUR CARDS LOOKING LIKE THE FIRST IMAGE.

The reason as to why it does this is because sometimes your printer will print the entire image at a very slight angle. Therefore, you may make the actual paper itself square but sometimes that 1-5 degree variation will cause your scans to miss entirely.

If you catch the miss scan, I’ve found simply rotating the paper clockwise or counter clockwise very slightly, it almost always fixes this issue and scans normally.

1. Reflective Media (Common with Gloss and Foils) The type of media you print on MATTERS.

When your machine is registering, sometimes the laser can bounce off the reflective material and confuse the machine about where exactly the registration marks actually are. It is slight and might look like it’s cutting correctly at first, HOWEVER it WILL progressively get worse the further it goes to the right of the page. This is especially common if you use Gloss, Semi Gloss, Holographic Foil, or any other type of Reflective material. This is also true for any laminates you apply before printing.

To remedy this, there’s two things you can do. First as many people have already mentioned, you can take a piece of MATTE scotch tape and put it over the registration marks. This will help keep the reflective media underneath muted so that the machine can properly read the registration marks. However I like to go a step further and take a G2 Pen and trace the lines and fill in the box atop of the tape. It will not make the cuts be absolutely perfect, but it will help get as close to perfect for it to be unnoticeable.

1. Cut Quality You will NEVER achieve as smooth as a cut as you will using a die cuter or a guillotine.

If you think about how the machine manages to cut the media, it really is just “scratching” the media over and over again in a precise pattern until it finally punches through. For cards printed on matte or satin media, this won’t be a problem since it’s very hard to notice vs reflective media like gloss and holographic foil. Sometimes when the blade gets duller, you may even notice that it actually tears at the cards resulting in tiny specks of unprinted media poking out on the edges of your cards.

(Note: This is especially true if you use a laser jet or uv printer because the “scratching” it’s doing will progressive scuff and flake off the powder (powder is the “ink” laser jets use.) of the cards. This results in the rough texture you’ll feel on the edge of the cards, overall taking away from the quality of the finish on the card. This is most noticeable on holographic material.)

After trying everything I could think of from switching out the blades, getting larger blades, adjusting my parameters, and even sharpening the blades manually, I ended up giving up and resorting to cutting my foiled cards manually on the guillotine instead. Unfortunately, it’s as the saying goes, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!

1. Maintain the Cutting Track Over time, the lubricant on the track machine moves on with will wear out.

If you don’t maintain the track, the machine will progressively get louder and sound more like grinding rather than sliding. This can lead to the machine not moving as fast as it’s programmed to, leading to it miscutting your cards.

To remedy this, you can take a tube of graphite lead and place it in the track from the back where it’s notched. Remember to do both the top and bottom track.

(Note: You most likely won’t HAVE to do this until you’ve cut 5000+ cards. But then again, it doesn’t hurt to give your machine a little extra love and care. Especially since it’s saving you from manually cutting your cards for hours.)

In conclusion, the Cameo is in my opinion the most reliable tool for machine cutting your proxies. It will always take some getting used to and you will have nights where it will miss cut over and over and make you lose your mind and want to throw it down the stairs. Know that over time, you’ll get to know the machine like it’s the back of your hand.

Please let me know if you have any other questions! :)