Metal shapers are considered obsolete now. There are, however, many reasons to have one in your home shop. They certainly come in many sizes, I have a 12 " Sheldon, footprint no larger than a grinder. Economy in tooling cost is one big reason to have it in a home shop. No need to purchase a carbide face mill, endmills, and all manner of specialty tools for specific jobs linear in nature when using a vertical mill. Any job requiring facing a surface area large or small is no problem. Tool has dulled? No problem, grind a new edge. Any work requiring linear tool paths are a piece of cake: splines, keyways, gears, right angles, multi-angles, T-slots, concave grooves, convex ridges and so on. You can even use it as a saw! Only your mind limits its application to work metal, all on cheap tooling.