Elegoo Admits the Centauri Carbon Won't Get Multi-Color Support Any Time Soon, Offers Compensation

3D printing specialist Elegoo has warned of further delays to its planned multi-color print add-on for the Centauri Carbon filament-based printer — and now states that it "cannot guarantee" a release date.

"Since last year, our engineering team has been working on multi-color printing for Centauri Carbon," Elegoo writes in its latest update to customers. "Due to some limitation of the hardware, so far the developing multi-color system has not yet delivered a performance that meets our expectation. And we cannot guarantee a release date for the multi-color system so far."

The Elegoo Centauri Carbon, which we reviewed earlier this year, is a fused filament fabrication printer based on a coreXY platform, and won considerable interest in its unveiling thanks to a competitive price for its features — which include a full enclosure system with integrated fume filters.

While the printer sold well in its own right, it also came with a promise: a planned upgrade that would add multi-material functionality, allowing the printer to automatically switch between filaments for automated multi-color printing. It's fair to assume that many buyers picked the Centauri Carbon up on the back of this promise — but it's a promise Elegoo is now walking back.

While the company does not appear to have completely abandoned its plans, development has not gone well — and Elegoo is warning that it cannot say when the upgrade will be ready to launch. As a result, it's offering Centauri Carbon owners a choice of benefits by way of compensation: a $50 coupon, good for three months, on all filament orders over $100 made in the Elegoo store; a one-year warranty extension, which covers everything except consumable parts; or an $80 coupon against the purchase of the Centauri Carbon 2 Combo bundle.

Centauri Carbon owners can find out how to claim their compensation on the Elegoo website.