About a year ago I picked-up an Elegoo OrangeStorm Giga and I was knocked-out by it's quality and capability. We've since put at least 50kg of plastic through it with only one significant breakdown that required maintenance.
This is a major improvement over my preview 3D printing experiences.
This made me wonder if the Giga is an anomaly, or if other Elegoo printers are made this well. When it came time to pick-up a small, fast printer for KGLMDPS I decided to find out and picked-up the Centauri Carbon. The "Combo" model had just been released so the standard model was on sale. Between that and a monthly "live your best live" benefit we get at work it cost me about $60 out of pocket, not too big of a gamble.
I won't replicate the information you can find on the website but stick to the things I learned about the machine myself.
Shipping was pretty fast and the machine arrived within a week. Assembly amounted to unboxing it, removing a few shipping screws and installing the display. Once assembled and turned-on the printer walks you through a self-calibration process that takes awhile (30 minutes maybe) and makes a lot of fun sounds.
At this point you're ready to print, and to keep the variables as few as possible I printed one of the models that was already loaded on the machine. It printed a 3DBenchy faster than anything I've ever seen and the quality was decent.
The next thing I did was connect it to the network and check for new firmware (there was none), then try to connect to it with Fluidd, the software I use to remotely manage my other printers. I was introduced to Fluidd by the Giga, then switched my Ender 5+ to use Klipper firmware so I could run it with Fluidd as well. Fluidd couldn't connect to the Carbon, so I pointed a web browser directly at it's IP address to see if something was wrong.
The browser loaded a web-based controller for the Carbon and I was able to manage it from there with no problems. As it turns out, the firmware on the Carbon doesn't provide an API compatible with Fluidd (maybe the same API as Octoprint?), but instead is something different.
Indeed, there is some controversy about the Carbon's firmware, and I found that there are Fluidd-compatible open-source alternatives so I'll have to explore that at some point.
Next I used the standard Carbon profiles provided by Orca Slicer to try printing a few reliable models to test it with my normal workflow and then push the speed and see what happens.
This all went off without a hitch. The only hang-up was that I wasn't able to change the speed on the machine to override the slicing settings the same way I have on other printers. In this case there's a menu with four presets instead of a mm/s adjustment.
The other weird thing is that you can't set it unless a print is in progress. I guess the idea is that it prevents you from accidentally leaving it in a non-default mode, but I wish there was a way to override it.
Next it was time to try something more challenging. I fed it a tray of parts for the T-800 I've been working on. These are small, detailed parts that require support and have particularly challenging small and thin sections. They are printed in a metallic "Silk" type of filament which in my experience can be brittle and have layer adhesion issues.
The first plate came out perfect. The hardest part was finding a way to keep the parts organized after removing them from the build plate (note to self: order more build plates). Once those parts were off I queued-up the next set of even more challenging parts.
The Carbon did a fine job on most of these but struggled some with the last row of parts. What's interesting is that those parts are not a lot more difficult to print than the ones in rows closer to the front, so I'm wondering if position on the build plate made a difference? I'm going to re-run those pieces alone in a more midline position and see what happens.
Overall I'm impressed with the output. With nothing but default settings and automatic configuration it printed almost every tricky part I threw at it as well as I've seen any FDM printer make parts like these. It is literally easier to use and more reliable than a 2D printer (which I know isn't saying much, but...).
Based on the experience so far, I feel like I could recommend this printer to someone with no interest in learning much about 3D printers themselves and they could just design & print things without having to do much more than follow the instructions. There's a number of printers that fall into this category, and what I've heard and seen from people who use them is that they work great until they don't, at which point fixing them is much more difficult than fixing a more "DIY" printer. This could be because you simply know more about your printer when you DIY it, but it also can be due to the more closed and proprietary nature of these machines. It will be interesting to see how the Carbon holds up in this regard, how easy it is to maintain and how repairable it is when something inevitably breaks, how hard it is to get parts, etc.
A few random notes:
Even with the enclosed cabinet and the lids and doors all closed, it can be loud when it gets going. It has a "silent" mode that might help, but I haven't tested that yet. I think most of the noise comes from the cabinet vent fan, which surprises me because on the Giga it's the parts cooling fans that make all the noise.
Speaking of the cabinet, the directions don't recommend using the top cover when printing PLA, but it really cuts-down on the noise so I'm using it anyway. Doing so doesn't appear to have any negative effects so far.
I've read complaints about the interior lighting, but it seems fine to me. I suppose their could be more, but maybe I'm just not that picky? It seems sufficient for time-lapse videos.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026