Elegoo Centauri Carbon

The Elegoo Centauri Carbon is an enclosed CoreXY 3D printer that I’ve found interesting for a few reasons and that I decided to start keeping notes about.

• 256x256x256mm build volume, hardened steel nozzle, direct drive extruder
• Works with OrcaSlicer (mostly) out of the box
• Price point (very low starting point but now closer to EUR 400, which is there I am drawing the line for a printer to tinker with)
• Possibility of multi-material printing with an Elegoo AMS unit
• Comes with hardened steel nozzle and explicit support for abrasive filaments
• Fits my volume constraints (398×404×490mm)

• Semi-proprietary Klipper firmware port (and fully proprietary display) that makes tinkering difficult, with limited upgrade path even though there is an active attempt at reverse engineering it that found an ancient (0.9.x) Klipper base.
• Controller board seems to use fairly low-end components.
• Several reports of the printer arriving with mechanical issues (misaligned axes, loose belts, etc)
• A few very detailed reports of the printer generating huge amounts of junk traffic to Chinese servers
• Elegoo’s track record regarding Open Source licensing is… interesting. There is a lot of controversy online.
• Several consecutive firmware updates with regressions and bugs
• Noise seems to be a common complaint (but also seems to be partially fixable with some Gcode tweaks)
• The multi-material upgrade will require the usual amount of filament waste
• Bowden tube path seems to strain filament, there are multiple workarounds and risers to “fix” it
• The toolhead magnets are weak, leading to occasional detachment of the toolhead fan during fast movements

Right now, despite some of the more modern features (and being built for multi-material and industrial filaments), this doesn’t seem like a good enough upgrade from the TwoTrees SK1 given all the software and hardware constraints.