I'm putting together specs for my CU300 Classic 5-way combo machine for my retirement/hobby shop. A tilting shaper head is an ~$1,000 factory add-on option. Stock feeder with support is ~ $2,000 more. The MM feeder support actually looks pretty awesome, no lifting of the power head is required, just slide it out of the way.
I don't currently own any shaper tooling, and I don't expect investing a lot of money in tooling. The only thing I've used close to a shaper is a 1990ish Delta 'shaper' which was really just a router table with built in motor that was suitable for hacking out a few raised panel doors.
FWIW, one of my concerns in investing too much in the shaper workflow in a combo-machine is the intrinsic pain it will be to recalibrate the shaper whenever I need to use the slider for that one board I forgot to cut, or destroyed . That pain is making me want to consider buying an inferior (perhaps 3HP Grizzly) shaper or build a router table or something like Festool's sliding router table, which initially looks expensive but once you price out all the pieces its not much more expensive than building your own sliding router table with lift, micro-adjustable fence,...
I don't see myself building windows or exterior doors, most furniture, but I may try my hand at one or two exterior doors with very simple profiles. I do have some trim for a remodel I might try to mill, but that will be A&C and a pretty simple profile.
Please share your experiences with a tilting shaper, how you use it, and anything else you'd like to share about shaper workflow on a combo machine.
Thanks,