Yeah I have done a good deal of work on the mill and I have tried to be very upfront about it. The stock mill just has no hope of reaching good results in aluminum. I think since it is open source that I do not feel so bad about the mods I have done to reach this level of work. If it had been sold as being “ready to mill metal” I will be upset at the amount of mods needed to truly make that a true statement. But it was always intended for wood and the like which it does pretty well out of the box.
I agree that it is a stretch to call is a X Carve in some respects. But without starting with the basic X Carve kit, reaching the same results for the same price would not be very easy. I also have gone to the extream on a few levels such as the controller and the DSP stepper drivers, but this was based on experiences from my Shapeoko 2 before and from my larger all ball screw mill.