@Alexandra_Smith & @Jan-Pieter , the UltiController is already included in the assembled version.
But to be honest: I think it’s a great experience to build one yourself. Really depends on the time you have - because one thing is a fact: I don’t know anybody who didn’t succeed building his/hers successfully in the end. You won’t be the first. As I said: The community leaves nobody behind.
@Florian_Horsch_flouS I still consider the ultimaker having one single problem: It seems that every Ultimaker I’ve had the privilege of using, requires a hot end temp of 200C for PLA. That’s just not right. What is the cause for this? Even other filaments that extrude perfectly on other machines at 180C, always have to be cranked up to 200C on the ultimaker (Diamond Age filament) - Largely for operation this doesn’t have an effect it seems, as the machine is completely reliable, but the needed 20C over other printers for the same filament drives me mad.
And @Matthew_Griffin the MAKE article on 3D printing was ridiculous. It obviously had a Makerbot bias, and largely the results seemed to be snatched out of thin air.
Mh - can’t say that’s true @ThantiK - mine actually is tuned to 190 Degree for FaberDashery PLA … strange
And @Dave_Durant are you sure you’ve printed 1-micron layer heights? The lowest I’m aware of anyone going is something like 20 micron layer heights with the ultimaker. (0.02mm)
@Nils_Hitze that’s so strange - Not only through the 2 ultimaker owners I know, but through numerous forums, posts, and other ultimaker users I’ve seen 200C over and over and over again. I guess it is just anecdotal though.
185°C for PLA. raised to 190-210 for very high speeds.
@Alexandra_Smith I’d say look to the users of each of the machines – and be wary of any machine that doesn’t have a solid community. You’ll be able to leverage the collective wisdom of the more active communities to get good things done with a machine, and find the practical tweaks and “special sauce” that can counter-intuitively help. The crowd here will be helpful and not helpful – lots of fierce opinions, but at heart we are all here because of our passions for tweaking and getting good results out of the machines we have selected. I’ve had great results out of my MakerBots, but that’s also because I’ve learned so much from the community how to tweak and improve those base units. The MAKE guide was an attempt to help those new to 3D printing read through experiences from those approaching each machine for the first time without the benefit of the weeks and months of tuning and tweaking than any of us ends up doing: you just need to pick one of these options, particularly one that you’ve seen in action and there is a huge mulch of community members who you can correspond with and learn from, and you are going to be fine. You can ignore Anthony Morris’ dismissal of Ultimakers because they require “a hot end temp of 200C for PLA. That’s just not right.” The range of values, including those higher than 180ºC for printing PLA on Ultimakers are from field testing and you’ll be able to dial in based on what works for your unit where you are printing: Ultimaker has an extremely able and active community who will help you do great work with your machine if you go that route. I’d just be wary of buying anything at the very top end of your funds that doesn’t have extensive community and field testing. Plus, plastic can be expensive. 
@ThantiK , regarding the Ultimaker temperatures for PLA. I can print with 185°C fine as well. For higher speeds i’m using 200 - 215°C (depending on filament brand) most of the times. I think it could be some kind of inaccuracy with the way (or where) the temperature is measured. I could test this with an external probe sometime soon. In my eyes not a flaw, more an interesting detail to look deeper into to fully understand what’s going on.
Regarding @Dave_Durant experiments with 1 (you read correctly: ONE) micron prints with the @Ultimaker (largely un-noted by the community):
@ThantiK , while I (and just about everybody else) agree that MAKE has been very biased towards MBI in the past, I thought the shootout was really pretty good. Far less biased than I expected…
And yes, like @Florian_Horsch_flouS said, I’ve printed at a little under one micron; 0.001mm; 1000 layers per mm. It takes an obscene amount of time to print anything. A simple 20mm calibration cube, at 10 seconds/layer, would take over a day to print…
Btw - everyone who is bringing their 3d Printer to #makemunich - we will do a Shootout of 3d Printers.
@Nils_Hitze , just being a “normal” RepRap operator, should i bring my non-standard Mendel90 beast, too?
Sure thing
You might have to help me carry it in, though 
Can we call that PrinterWar?
Wow @Dave_Durant @Florian_Horsch_flouS 1 micron layer height is very impressive. Why isn’t this more noted in the community?
Probably because it makes something like a 20mm cube which normally takes 5-10 minutes to print to taking over a day to print. Bigger objects that take hours to print would take weeks.
It was fun to have done, it gets #ultimaker some bragging rights if they want them, and I’ll probably get back to it once I have some time and sort some issues out but in the end, it’s not really a useful way to print.
@Dave_Durant Thanks for the kind words – I took great efforts to try to prevent MakerBot bias during that test (was focused, as I said, on how people arriving to each machine for the first time would feel.) I wasn’t there long enough after the tests and writing my pieces, but I was really hoping to get the communities for each printer engaged in showing off how much better they could do with the test items than those of us assigned to each printer as a “Christmas morning” experiment.
Also, the 1 micron stuff maybe impractical for lots of uses – but the one use that this is insanely killer for is for jewelry. Those really expensive wax printers can take multiple days per ring, but you need that resolution because you can then case in precious metals! That is quite a feat! Have you tried making jewelry?
You’re welcome, @Matthew_Griffin . I don’t hesitate to give MAKE crap when they’re bad (like the Ultimaker review that said it wasn’t really that much better than a ToM…) so I sorta have to also speak up when they’re good! 
It was indeed a good issue and I’ve recommended it several times.
Interesting bit on the jewelry - I hadn’t thought of that. It seems like it wouldn’t be worth it without having a very small nozzle - a stock 0.4mm one is probably too big for fine details. Since you’re extruding at such a slow rate, you’d probably get better results on a 1.75mm machine too, instead of the 3mm filament Ultimaker uses.
Though I love my Ultimaker, it might not be the best tool for the job… I have no idea what the wax printers cost but I bet you could build a small and very, very high detailed FDM printer for well under US$1k. Something like a Form1 would be really good, if the material is suitable for lost-polymer casting - it’s got amazing detail and is goo-SLS so support structures and leveling aren’t an issue like they are with FDM.
@Alexandra_Smith I agree there is lack of reviews on the Rostok Max. A big reason for that is because they just launched via Kickstarter at the end of November. That being said it also means it has a pretty big community on its forums because there is around 50 people all doing initial builds at the same time and many are helping each other out. For example one of the people wrote a 120+ page manual on how to build and calibrate the Rostok Max that people are using and giving feedback on so it is probably one of the best documented build processes out there.
I’m going to hopefully be building my Rostok Max this weekend, should I try to document it for you? Also, I bought my first printer (a MakerGear Prusa) for costuming as well. Do you want a wall of text about things I’ve seen?
Thanks to everybody for their input! There seems to be a decent consensus around Ultimaker, so I’ll be placing an order with them later today for a kit and Ulticontroller. Wish me luck!
I’ll wish you congrats instead - no luck needed!