The Shaper looks like an interesting tool for large wood or plastic workpieces, people don’t seem to be having much success on materials that are harder to cut though.
Well that’s a bummer. There are other manufacturers who make vertical routers that I’ve seen before, but a portable one… now that’s tricky.
My neighbour was watching the Shaper very closely, he’s got a bit of a Festool problem, I think there ought to be a support group and recovery programme for Festool users 
There’s a whole bunch of cheap CNC designs out there that try to save space and cost by hanging themselves from the workpiece vertically.
The common problems with them seem to be;
- No rigid structure to hold the stock in the Z plane properly - this fundamentally limits Z depth accuracy, Z depth consistency and the rate of cutting as that pulls / pushes material
- Very weak holding of the cutter in the Z plane - same problems
- Inability to cut out large areas or “carve” as they rely on the workpiece to provide Z=0 reference, once you’ve cut away more than the baseplate size they can’t continue
- X, Y motion systems that are very susceptible to stretch and backlash (the Origin was an interesting outlier there using controls instead of large X, Y motion)
- Low mass cutter heads which tend to have low resistance to vibration, further limiting the cutting rates and accuracy
The approach of sensing the 3D position of the cutter and then using rapid servo controls to correct for this is interesting, but as the Shaper shows, is still quite limited. The Shaper is bound to follow the surface of the workpiece, whether that is in a single Z plane or not, also you’d have to plan cuts quite carefully to avoid the “nothing left to stand it on” problem if carving out.
It’s rarely shown in any of the videos but the Shaper does not seem to be able to produce the same clean bottom of cut finish that a well tuned Shapeoko, Nomad or larger CNC machine can, this is presumably related to the no-Z-plane design choice.
All that said, if you want to go cut a 2D shape out of a large flat piece of stock it seems like a very good machine, but as soon as you need the 2.5D or harder to cut materials the limits become apparent.
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I own a ShaperOrigin (owned it before my Shapeoko) so I can clear some things up…
- It is an amazing feat of engineering that is incredibly useful and powerful
- I would NOT recommend using it vertically, although it will work and has been done successfully.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-Yx8EkYLg) - I have found that the Shaper and the Shapoko complement each other well, but I will usually look to use the Shapeoko first and if its not a good fit, fall back to the ShaperOrigin.
Things the Shapeoko does NOT do well:
- Parts bigger than the bed (yes I know you can tile…not ideal)
- Awkward sized or tall parts
- Mortises (unless you build a nice vertical wall to your base)
- On the fly cutting (requires planning, drawing, and tool-pathing) with no computer needed.
Things the ShaperOrigin does NOT do well:
- It does not run on its own…takes a bit of muscle and can be fatiguing to run for a long time
- @LiamN you are correct the bottoms will not be perfectly flat unless you are super consistent with the downward pressure that you apply. Even a pretty well tuned Shapeoko tends to leave some lines and both clean up nicely with sandpaper. You also can not pocket larger than the base of the Shaper’s base or it will fall in. There are some workarounds to this but it can limit design.
- Perfectly straight lines. I have found that it handles curves REALLY well but cutting a dead straight line is sometimes a struggle. A finishing pass helps.
- Depending on the project, set up time is sometimes a pain – laying down tape and getting your work item flush.
- No 3D or V-carve paths currently supported or on the horizon. Purely a 2.5D tool
Happy to answer any questions people have on the Shaper!
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That’s really helpful, I’ll point my neighbour at it.
The Shaper seems to be very well suited to work that won’t fit on the flatbed machine or work you have to take the machine to, as you say complementary tools.
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