The Elegoo Centauri Carbon, a budget-friendly Core XY 3D printer has been popular in 2025. It seems that in 2026, Elegoo will launch the Centauri Carbon 2, which, according to the official images, has a multi-material system (AMS / MMU depending on brand) for multi-color printing.
Price and release date are still a mystery. The only vague date that we have is Q1 2026 which comes from a press release regarding a delayed release date for a multi-color print upgrade for the original Centauri Carbon.
In the machine translated official product page we can see the familiar Centauri Carbon design, but with four spools of filament, feeding into a series of tubes for multi-material printing. The large plastic "hat" casts an imposing shadow over an already large printer. This system is seemingly called "CANVAS" and the design of the filament path looks less clunky than other systems. We'll have to wait and see how it handles in the real world.
The Centauri Carbon 2 has the same 256 x 256 x 256 mm build volumeas its predecessor and what looks like the same extruder and tool head, but the heated print bed is now a 1,000-watt AC heatbed, and a claimed 110C temperature, which matches the original Centauri Carbon.
Automated bed leveling looks to be in an 11 x 11 grid, so that's 121 points of contact, just like the Centuari Carbon 1. I can also see that the same lettered, build plates are used, offering the best options for different filaments. It should mean that build plates made for the Centauri Carbon 1 should also work on the new printer.
An unboxing video found on the Elegoo Centauri Carbon Facebook group shows that the multi-color system has an RFID reader, used to quickly identify filament spools. This isn't new, Bambu Lab has done this before, but it shows that Elegoo are still aping the Bambu Lab's designs.
Printable filaments seem to be the usual suspects: PLA, PETG, TPU and ABS. How hot the hot end can get and what it is made of is a mystery for now. Translation did mention an aluminum alloy, but this doesn't sound correct as the original had a hardened steel/brass hot end. So the mystery remains.
Another video from Reddit shows the printer running a self-check process, giving us a look at all four filament tubes going into the extruder, and a new fan placed on the left side of the print chamber.
Version 1.2.0.19 of Elegoo Slicer seemingly has support for the Centauri Carbon 2, and I know that for a fact because this is my copy, which I use with my own Centauri Carbon 3D printer. I accidentally setup multi-color printing when looking for the printer.
Over-the-Air (OTA) software updates look to be handled just like the Centauri Carbon 1, and the printer is using Wi-Fi to receive prints over the network. There is a reference to 6GB+ in the text and using an AI translation service on the image, it possibly refers to on-device storage.
I can see a reference to a camera, and machine translation is a bit sketchy here, but there are no references to resolution, leaving me to surmise that it is the same 720p camera as the original. The camera was OK, but the LED light system was very poor on the original, and I cannot see any claims of improved lighting for the Centauri Carbon 2.
The Centauri Carbon 2 is a bit of a mystery for now. We know it exists, and we can surmise some details from the product page. The biggest change is seemingly multi-material printing, something that was touted for the original Centauri Carbon, specifically a Q3 2025 release, which has come and gone. For now we need to wait until Q1 2026 to see what the Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 has to offer.
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