Review of 360bestbuy Kossel XL from AliExpress Purchased: Mar 7, 2016
Overall rating: 2/5 stars Update: 3/5 stars
As a seasoned DIY 3D printer enthusiast, I was excited to try the 360bestbuy Kossel XL. It was shipped almost immediately after I ordered it and it arrived very quickly in the USA--3 days. It appeared at first that there were no assembly instructions, but after messaging 360bestbuy, it turns out they have PDF files on the SD Card included in the box. The instructions are adequate, but not great--I had to refer to other guides online to understand how to attach the endstops for instance.
The printed parts are of excellent quality, and the frame is precise and sturdy. The carbon fiber legs that hold the hotend were sized precisely.
Unfortunately, there were several major issues as well: the M4 square nuts meant to be used with the aluminum extrusion were too thick--they were 3.54mm thick instead of 3mm. The linear rails were not smooth--360bestbuy claims the friction will reduce with use, but one of the rails' friction fluctuated considerably, and I deemed it unacceptable for the quality of print I hope to achieve. The LCD Panel has a rotary encoder that, unfortunately, would consistently but randomly select things in the menu even when not pressed. The hotend would "catch" the incoming 1.75mm filament and after disassembly I discovered the cause--the internal join between the heatsink and outgoing metal tube was off center. Lastly, the 6 amp (12V) power supply was unable to deliver more than 4.5 amps which would cause the feed motor to draw more power than was available, dropping the voltage below 12V and causing the whole Ramps board to reset.
360bestbuy has been responsive and willing to help, but due to the constraints I'm working under I've replaced the unsatisfactory components locally and/or via Amazon. Once they have some of these quality issues worked out, I would be able to recommend their product, but not until they do.
Update: Hank Hu at 360bestbuy has been very helpful in replacing parts and diagnosing issues. The rotary encoder issue has been fixed by replacing the LCD adapter on the ramps1.4 board--it turned out there were two pins soldered together on the other LCD adapter board. He also sent a new linear slide, which helped, but since I'd already bought 3 very nice ones, I didn't use the replacement part.
I replaced the hotend with an E3D hotend, and it is working beautifully without modification. I also replaced the 6A power supply with a 10A power supply from Amazon.com and it has been working perfectly.