Much of the answer depends on your growth plans. Are you planning to keep adding taps? If yes, a filter press will be in your future, if you don't plan to add very many taps, the filter press maybe yes, maybe no. If you get a bottler, either water jacketed or steam, they have an option for a filter tray. the trays use the same material as the cone filters, but you use flat ones, big enough to extend up the sides as well as cover the whole flat surface. Then you also get flat pre filters and lay 3,4,or 5 on top, then you add the hot syrup to fill the filter in the tray. Those work a lot better, because you can keep the pan and tray hot while you filtr, then as a prefilter gets clogged up, you carefully dump it into the next prefilter and continue filtering. This method if far superior to cone filters because you are not concentrating the niter at one spot, the point. If you plan to grow, you can still go with the flat filters, then in a year or 2, buy a filter press, or a vacuum filter, both work wonderfully.
When I bought my filter press it was on sale in a spring sale in the off season, I bought a 7" short press (3 sets of plates). I think at the time I had almost 400 taps (as I graduated from flat filters in the top of my bottler) or so. AS I grew later on I ordered 2 more sets of plates (a set is one waffle plate and one hollow plate) so I then. With that my filter press was as big as I could get without buying longer plate support rods. At my largest I ever tapped I had 1320 taps on that filter press, plus I bought sap, at times processing over 2000 taps worth of syrup, all on the then enlarged filter press. As I got older and had a lot fewer taps, I still use the 5 plate filter press, but I now do it on what will likely be 200-300 taps next season and rather than the gear pump it started with, my filtr press now has an air powered diaphragm pump, huge improvement.
I suggest whenever you do get a filter press you get one with an air powered diaphragm pump, you get far easier control of the filter.
Dave Klish, I recently ordered a 2x6 wood fired evaporator from A&A Sheet Metal which I will be converting to oil fired
Now have solar, 2x6 finish pan, 5 bank 7x7 filter press, large water jacketed bottler, and tankless water heater.
Recently bought another Gingerich RO, this one was a 125, but a second membrane was added thus is a 250, like I had.
After running a 2x3, a 2x6, 3x8 tapping from 79 taps up to 1320 all woodfired, now I'm going to a 2x6 oil fired and a 200-425 taps.