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.