I like Z-independent dust shoes and have built my fair share of prototypes (like this 3D-printed one )
This guy has a cool video where he made a custom “floating” dust shoe, interesting concept where the shoe is still attached to the router (so not Z independent) but compresses and expands so as to always be in contact with the stock
spoiler alert: I build one and while it works fantastic for relatively thin pieces of stock, as soon as you cut something thick or irregular the shoe will get stuck in the piece…so my prototype is now collecting dust, not CNC dust but the shelve kind.
And then there is that other guy who built a dust shoe that uses its own axis to move up and down during the cut based on the Gcode…not doable on a Shapeoko but still a fantastic project that I thought I would mention, for science.
