Elegoo Centauri Carbon CoreXY 3D printer review
Conclusion
I’ve fallen in love with the Elegoo Centauri Carbon
The world of 3D printing has changed. Gone are the days of constant bed levelling and endless tinkering. Today, 3D printers just work. Yes, that may be oversimplifying things a little, but not by that much. 3D printers are now easy to use. Calibrating them and maintaining them is no longer a huge part of the hobby. Today’s 3D printers are tools; if you use good filament and slice your models well, things tend to run smoothly.
Using the Elegoo Centauri Carbon was simplicity itself. Just unbox the printer, follow the set-up guide, and you are ready to go. Wait for the automatic calibration to complete, and you will be ready to start printing.
Over the past week, we’ve been printing using this machine almost continuously, and the only print failures were due to user error. How did this happen? I used tangled filament. Nobody’s perfect. Aside from that, everything went without a hitch. Automatic bed levelling worked as intended; print quality was high, and dimensional accuracy was great. Overall, there isn’t much to complain about here.
A solid 3D printer from Elegoo
We love the Centauri Carbon, but it isn’t perfect. Elegoo has a solid product here, but there are some things that I don’t like. One of them is this label on its top glass panel. “When printing low-temperature filaments such as PLA and flexible filaments, please remove the top cover”. While I understand why this is there, the need to remove the top for PLA prints defeats the purpose of an “enclosed” 3D printer. With PLA being the most commonly used filament type, I would prefer an alternative method of keeping the enclosure cool.
Taking off this lid increases noise levels significantly. Another factor is that now I have a lid to place or store somewhere. Can you print PLA with this lid installed? Yes, but the results may not be optimal. I’d prefer an openable vent that’s smaller and will let less noise out of the enclosure. Ideally, I would like more filtered ventilation that can keep the chamber cool enough for extended PLA 3D printing. Regardless, this isn’t a dealbreaker. Perhaps Elegoo will consider this feedback if they make a Centauri Carbon II.
A fast, affordable, and reliable printer
Sadly, for this early embargo, we cannot talk about exact pricing. The 3D printing marking is highly competitive, and pricing can change quickly as competitors react to one another. For now, all I can say is that the Centuari Carbon was built to be price competitive. Official pricing should be revealed soon. – (Update) – The Elegoo Centauri Carbon costs £299.99
We’ve stressed tested this printer as hard as we could this past week, and it didn’t miss a beat. For our multiboard project, we made good use of this printer’s “print again” feature for repeated prints. Once any print finishes, users have the option to press a “print again” button, which is great news for anyone into batch printing. When a print ends, just clear your build plate and hit “print again.”
The Elegoo Centauri Carbon is a 3D printer that we can treat like a tool. If we want something printed, it can get the job done. We’ve done a lot with the little time we have had with the Centuari Carbon, and that has won this printer our seal of approval. Nicely done, Elegoo. Your engineers have done you proud.
There’s more to come for the Elegoo Centauri Carbon
We asked Elegoo if they had a multi-material system planned for the Centauri Carbon, and they confirmed it. We won’t have to wait long for a multi-material upgrade for this printer. Sadly, we weren’t given a planned release date, but we were told we “won’t have to wait long.”
You can join the discussion on Elegoo’s Centauri Carbon 3D printer on the OC3D Forums.
