I would highly recommend getting a pasta machine if you wanted to really get into polymer clay. I have a very basic cheap one, but I do hope in the future to purchase a better quality one.
I have found it a life saver when conditioning your clay to start working with it, which you have to do to wake up the clay to make it manageable and workable, if you don’t it will just crumble. There are loads of videos on YouTube if you search for how to condition polymer clay.
So like with everything, if you look after your tools they will last longer.
This video will show you how to keep your pasta machine clean.
Here’s the link below to the video, I sadly can’t embed it onto this post.