Best Shaper Under $5000?

[Patrick Kane]

Always funny how the budget can creep. In all honesty, the OP could get by with a used med duty machine for ~1-2k and save the rest for a feeder, nice tooling, etc but since the starting budget is where it is, it opened up the door to lots of other options. Lots of ways to accomplish his goal within the intended budget and it's always worth talking about all the options, imo.

I did warn him about the impending upsell!

I agree that making cope/stick cuts on a taiwanese shaper would be just fine. Similarly, he could make a homemade ring fence out of plywood for his pattern work. My big take away from this discussion is $5,000 will get you an adequate machine with basic tooling and a feeder, OR you should look to be around $8,000+ for a capable machine/tooling for covering almost all of your shaper bases. The fact is that most of us do not need to cover all of our shaper bases. Like i said before, i do not do tenon work on my shaper and i really have no intention of starting. And, as cool as i think euro window production is, i wont be doing that work anytime soon either. It means i dont need a machine capable of spinning 10"+ diameter stacked tooling.

The 3 phase cost and discussion is another topic entirely. I will say i only have two regrets with my current shop setup and those include; 1) not setting up a broad 3 phase converter early on(i run a few machines off separate VFDs), 2) not cutting in a double door to replace my single man door into the garage. I would have better and less expensive machines if i had easy 3 phase and a means of getting said tools through an opening greater than 32.75". As it stands, i spent more money acquiring smaller single phase tools. A third regret would be not upgrading my home service to 200amps a decade ago.

[STUART Robertson]

I wouldn't consider not having a tilting type or not having a power feed and a slding table is extra useful too.

[STUART Robertson]

You want easy micro adjustment in the fences.

[brent stanley]

If you were set on buying new, I would probably get the Hammer out of those three choices. It is built with European guarding and jigs in mind and Hammer offers a lot of additional accessories and guarding you can pick up down the line if you want. You may find the tilt more helpful than you can anticipate right now. As folks have said, for the same money you can get a higher quality and more capable machine on the used market, but you need to check or hope that everything runs true else you have issues to deal with. I regularly run into folks with new Taiwanese or Chinese machines that are not running true and cannot get cope and stick joinery really tight as a result. At least with the Hammer they're built to ISO specs and there is a dealer network you can turn to with a direct connection to the factory if needed.

If you fall in love with shapers and want to upgrade, the option may be available to have two. Keep this first one for lighter work (sticking) and use the higher one for heavier work.