We Now Know More About the Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2

Elegoo’s announcement of the Centauri Carbon 2 was a little ham-fisted, if you ask me. In announcing a delay to that printer’s filament switching device, and redirecting attention to the upcoming Centauri Carbon 2 – which has the multi-filament Canvas system by default – you could be forgiven for thinking it was a polite way for the company to say “It ain’t gonna happen”. That was my impression, but the language made no guarantees, and so we reported it with the uncertainty it warranted.

Having spoken to the company at Formnext, the picture is much clearer, and with it, an idea of what the Centauri Carbon 2 is and is not.

First things first – the original Centauri Carbon will still get a multicolor device. No word yet on when, or what it will look like, but addressing the ambiguity we were assured that it will still happen and it was not Elegoo’s intention to string users along nor convince them that the Centauri Carbon 2 was a substitute.

Despite its near identical looks, the Centauri Carbon 2 packs significant changes under the hood that set it apart as a distinct printer from the original Centauri Carbon.

Centauri Carbon 2: What’s New?

The obvious change is, of course, the filament changer. Called Canvas, it sits mounted to the printer’s frame, similar to the Flashforge AD5X, and feeds up to four colors or materials into a given print.

The Canvas is standard equipment on the Centauri Carbon 2. Initially, you will not be able to get the printer without it. Tapping a spool of Elegoo’s RFID-tagged filament to the Canvas will load the material’s details onto the printer. The system uses Elegoo’s open source standard for the tag, meaning you could theoretically create your own tags for other materials and simplify your workflow; likewise any other manufacturers that pick it up should work, too, though the likelihood of this seems low given the wild west of tag standards currently.