I like fresh pasta, and it's astonishing how expensive the simple rollers, found in most Italian kitchens, have become. Actually, simpler the better, when it comes to pasta, so I don't need a ravioli cutter (a plaque or a stamp will do) nor a spaghetti maker, or any other fancy roller. Most of what you need in pasta can be made simply with this machine. This machine consists of two parts: the progressive roller that (like the old washing machine wringers) compresses the dough into a smooth flat sheet, and the cutters, which cut either tagliatelle (literally "cut" noodles") or tagliolini, which is sort of a diminutive of tagliatelle. In other words, thin noodles. The metal machine clamps to your counter, and it's hand-cranked. No motor. This is simplicity. I've tried other pasta machines, tested the ones for KitchenAids, the extruding machines, and even rolled my noodles out by hand with a rolling pin and rolled up for cutting. In my testing, I found that this kind of machine gives the most satisfactory results and has the most versatility for the money spent. In other words, you can spend a lot more, but you get not a lot more functionality.The process to make pasta is easy once it's explained, and you could literally, if you boil your water first, have a fresh pasta dinner in about 10 minutes. First, you make a dough, generally with egg for easier rolling, and this can be done by hand or in the food processor. After you ball up the dough and let it rest for a few minutes (or not if you are trying the speed method) you roll it out under the widest setting, tripling the dough and running it through four or five times to smooth it out. Then you run it, well floured, through the roller from widest to second thinnest (setting 5.) Why not setting 6? I find it inevitably tears or gets clogged unless you let the dough dry a bit. I've never found it useful. Maybe it's like "Spinal Tap." ("This one's got eleven!") You don't need it.After rolling it thin (sometimes I cut the dough to keep it from stretching across the room) you then flour it well AGAIN and run it through either the large cutter (tagliatelle) or the smaller cutter (taliolini.) The tagliolini will clog and clump together unless the dough is slightly dried and very well floured before cutting, and you have to toss it as soon as it is cut, or it will slump into a big mass. Takes a bit of practice. At this point, you can throw it into the boiling water where it will cook in a few minutes. Drain, serve with your sauce (I use lemon zest, a touch of lemon juice, olive oil, capers and possibly some garlic and cheese.)You make ravioli by simply rolling out the dough, then folding it over lumps of filling and stamping single raviolis, or placing the dough on a floured or greased plaque, filling, egg wash the sides, place another sheet of dough on top and roll down to cut the raviolis and press together. Personally, I find the single stamp easier and just as fast.Lasagna is the same, roll out sheets, flour them, and you really don't even need to boil them as the fresh pasta will cook in the sauce. Canneloni are made the same way, cut a sheet into a square, add filling, roll and place seam down in a pan of sauce, continue till you fill the pan with canneloni and bake with or without cheese and bechamel on top.Once you get good at tagliolini, you will find they substitute for spaghetti or cappelini just fine. The only thing you won't be making are ziti or bucatini. You need a die and a pasta extruder for those.This is a good, inexpensive machine. One more note: do NOT wash. Brush dough and flour away with a pastry brush. Washing will make it rust, and will clog the cutters with glue-like dough bits.One more note, if you make Polymer Clay beads and objects, this is just what you want to roll out the sheets of clay. Having done that, however, you must dedicate the machine to a non-food purpose thereafter. The clay plasticizers will cling to the metal and since you really cannot wash a pasta maker, it is useless for food once you use it for polymer clay. But this machine will help you roll sheets for making millefiori canes or faux stone surfaces.