What does Elegoo’s new Centauri Carbon mean to the 3D printing industry?
Elegoo recently announced a new, upcoming device called the Centauri Carbon. It’s quite unlike the previous FFF and resin machines produced by the company, as it’s a CoreXY device.
That’s about all we know about the mysterious machine, as there have been no specifications published. Although the machine was publicly shown at Rapid+TCT the other week, you can see the “Stay Tuned” note on the display.
What can we infer about the machine without specs? Let’s see what we can tell so far:
- It’s an enclosed machine, making it suitable for engineering materials
- It is a CoreXY machine that should be capable of high speed 3D printing with appropriate firmware
- It’s name includes “Carbon”, suggesting that it could possibly be designed for carbon fiber or composite materials
- It has an attractive color touch screen
That’s all interesting, but let’s reflect on those statements: they also ALL apply to the Bambu Lab X1C device.
Make no mistake, Elegoo is definitely trying to catch some of the extreme interest in the Bambu Lab X1C. In fact, from a distance the machines would visually appear quite similar.
The X1C has turned the industry upside down with its high speed printing, near-perfect print quality, reliability and low price point. Bambu Lab has sold countless thousands of these machines, and it’s common to see banks of them running in many companies. We don’t know the sales figures, but it is almost certain they have outsold competing machines by a large margin.
The rest of the industry was caught and has been frantically trying to catch up. Older models have been quickly tweaked into high speed devices. New machines emerge later as it takes time to catch up.
The Centauri Carbon appears to be Elegoo’s response to the X1C craze.
We don’t know much about the “CC”, but there’s more to the package than just the hardware. Elegoo will have to match Bambu Lab’s cloud service for machine monitoring and job dispatch, and that can be very complicated. Even Bambu Lab had a security incident occur on their network, which they swiftly repaired. We also don’t know the price point for the Centauri Carbon.
From a higher point of view, it seems that the X1C machine style could be emerging as a standard desktop 3D printer configuration. If many companies produce machines of this style, then it will come to be expected by buyers.
That’s a good thing, as it would enable easier comparison between products and hopefully spur competition. In the long run, companies bringing out similar machines will drive down prices and that’s good for everyone (except for the higher priced competitors, of course.)
Via Elegoo and PRNewswire
