Cool, thanks! :)

I don't remember exactly about the price. But I think it was about 300 € for the complete set of parts. (It's about 20 kg). It will be much cheaper and easier to sew if you do it in steel. But it will be about three times heavier. The only thing to machine are the holes for the bearings, which can be done by hand.

Do you mind if I ask how much it cost for the aluminum and the machining?

Thanks for sharing, Reputech. I have a few suggestions: 1. Adjustable hand reamers could be used to produce the precise and desired hole diameters. They can actually be chucked on a machine (drill press, mill, lathe, etc.) and turned very slowly too (still by hand, even), in order to maintain squareness. Several web tool stores and Harbor Freight here in the U.S. sell inexpensive hand reamer sets of Indian production and they should be adequate for this job. 2. It's a simple matter to mount the motor in back and switch each pair of leads in the connector at the Arduino board. A dental pick can be used to unlock the metal connector pins from the white housing. I believe the subject has been covered in the Ultimaker forums. Alternatively, a user could rebuild Marlin firmware, as you mentioned, and not swap the wire pairs, 3. WRT the suggestion for an aluminum Z-stage...I often print large and thick parts in ABS and use a heated build chamber (bubble wrap tent around my UM). The wooden Z-stage distorts significantly with temperature changes. I often achieve 65-70 C within the tent and it takes hours of pre-heating for the Z-stage level set to stabilize. I plan to build a new stage from precision Mic6 aluminum tooling plate someday. Yes--an aluminum stage is quite desirable and warranted.

Parts for an aluminium z stage are included.... Its a sandwich construction with wooden filling. You will see when you download. I just didn'n have the time to build it up. The parts are lieing on my table... :-)

Excellent work! As I lack the equipment to make it myself, I sorely wish somebody would sell this frame as a kit. I'd also like to see the z platform supports done in metal. Mine warps and twists every time the humidity changes, forcing me to re-level the bed constantly. Living in the desert, where the humidity ranges from 5% normal to 100% (when it rains) makes wood very unstable.

@erik: you're absolutely right. The motor could be fixed nicely at the back panel. The reason why i mounted it on the front side is only to leave the machine settings as is. I dont need any changes and can leave the standard settings of the firmware. (Not even a "-" has to be added ;-)

Hi Joel, I made a mistake, I should have said that it's CC-BY-NC-SA. We really need to add that to the list of licenses, it's in the issue tracker already, though. Glad to hear that the aluminium version works well for you! We've considered direct drive too. I think that may be the biggest improvement, not necessarily the alu frame, or do you think differently? By the way, couldn't the Y-axis motor be mounted nicely at the back of the machine?

Joel, do I see well and you kept the wooden Z-stage? If so, any reason for that? Because it seems to me that it's really a point where a more flat and rigid plate would help?

Thanks for your inputs! If you want the derivatives to use the same license you should maybe use a license like CC-BY-NC-SA. Or am I wrong? But i will change it immediatly. That's no problem. I really like my Ultimaker. it's really fast and accurate and since it has a new frame even more precise and faster. I normaly use about 100 mm/s printspeed and 300 mm/s fast forward without any problems. Greetings from Switzerland Joel

Hi Reputech! Thanks for sharing your Ultimaker Derivative! Although we might not limit commercial use, the original Ultimaker license is CC-BY-NC. Could you use the same license for your derivative? One other thing: you didn't publish it yet! You're not the first who didn't get to see the publish button... We're improving the design soon, so this is immediately clear. Anyway, once you've published it, I'd really like to feature your alu Ultimaker on the front-page!