Okay then this beggs the $64 question. How much does one of these dream machines cost?
Well, therein lies the rub...
You can find them all over the internet, I got my Silhouette SD 2 years or so ago off of a general crafts store website for something like $160ish... I recently got my new Silhouette Cameo with a mega-bundle of extra goodies and replacement mats/blades for something like $280.
So it's definitely an investment, particularly for a hobby that's heavily oriented around being low-cost on the whole. Definitely look around on the internet as well, there are a few other makers of similar plotter/cutters, some even have more features. Research them as well to make sure it's really something you want, and will necessitate. One model simply doesn't warrant a plotter/cutter, it's like getting a howitzer to go duck hunting... But if you're going to be making many many models over time, it can more than make itself worthwhile.
For me however, my first machine proved its worth when I replicated a "Chinese papercut" pattern of a Koi fish, that previously took me two days to cut, excruciatingly cut every single scale for scale a while back... I set up the patter in the Silhouette cutter, and it not only cut it out in just a few minutes, it cut it so cleanly it was every bit as good as a die-cut, even superior to my hand-cut original as there weren't even any blade marks or nicks along the edges where I turned my xacto knife to make turns.
The utterly profound level of time-dilation you can get from "production" level amounts of work, or just repeating a previous task (like cutting tank tread links), due to its automated nature is a force multiplier that's really hard to measure for me, and on the other side it ends up more akin to a 3D puzzle or a lego set, where now all I need to do is make use of the pieces it's already cut.
Time saved cutting can be that much more time gained crafting...