Hello peoples! Quite new member humbly asking for assistance…Many years ago I bought the above mentioned 3D printer through Indiegogo, and once I received it, I checked the contents of the box and then said to myself “I’ll get to the printing later”. “Later” turned out to be 8 yrs later. I finally got the thing out of the box, put it together and since there are no instructions on how to use it I’ve searched online but unfortunately I can’t find anything useful.
Apparently the manufacturers closed up shop, and removed their website. That’s why I’m reaching out to you all, maybe you know how to set it up with the computer, the software to use, etc, etc? Or know someone who knows? I’d be forever grateful for ANY help you can throw my way. I found a post with the contact info for someone who apparently used to work at Easy Arts, i’ll give that a try as well.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read through this, and again, for any pointers you can give me.
Cheers,
V.
Take a look at the ares tag — That has the old Ares community from Google+ archived in it, as well as a few posts since, and I have added that tag to your post as well. Here are a few possibly useful posts to get you started:
Hey V! That is hilarious that you have a new-in-box Ares in 2023. Michael linked my old post from 3 years ago with some resources (that pinged me).
You bought an open-source printer way back then, which will help quite a bit. It runs with Octopi on an old raspberry pi with a pretty standard motor control board under the hood, so with a bit of tinkering, you can bring it up to date for 2023.
Because of the age of the version of Octopi on there, I don’t think “auto-update” will work up to the current version, but you should be able to print with the old version too. If you want to get into it, you can try swapping out the Pi’s SD card with a brand-new Octopi build.
It all depends on how much time you want to put into it. That old firmware you were asking about is included in the old post that Michael linked. Good luck!
I have a collection of Easy Arts original files and articles that I contributed to its forum back then in this google drive. After Easy Arts shuttered its forum, I ran a Google+ Group about Ares. But then, Google+ also shuttered. Thanks to @mcdanlj, that archive got added to this area so you can search for discussions. (And thanks again for pointing “new” users to this corner.) Feel free to ask questions, too. As @whizzard mentioned, you can use Cura as outside slicer. The free KISSlicer is no longer available. But the latest Cura actually includes a Ares 3D profile! Its effects are quite different from Easy Arts’ KISSlicer profile, but is robust enough for many prints out of the box.
The built-in Octopi is an alpha release, so auto update never worked. (It was quite visionary for Easy Arts to use Octopi in a commercially supported 3D printer.) Some people reported yanking out the SD card and updated Octopi to standard version so auto update could work. I never figured out a safe way to update without opening the hood, so mine is still the old version - and it works just fine. That Octopi is integrated with an embedded Cura engine so theoretically you can print an STL file in one click. The embedded engine is a prerelease of sorts, not a lot of functions, and is not as robust if your model is trickier.
One particular point to watch out is rod length. For some reason some Easy Arts shipments contained rods and firmware that were incompatible out of the box. Check out my article on this subject about updating firmware.
Hope you will enjoy your machine for many years to come. As many noted in the Google+ discussions, Ares 3D is very solid for its price - at that time. Only very recently, similarly capable machines could be had for prices lower than that of Ares 3D. (In addition to using Octopi, Ares’ auto leveling is a great feature. The glass print surface is fantastic. Ares is expected to be a multi-function machine, too. Some of us also bought those accessaries. But Easy Arts never released easy enough software to perform those functions without substantial hacking on the users’ part.)
Thank you so much Yuan Liu ! I’m a total noob, like I said in my priginal post I’ve only unboxed the ARES which was sitting in a corner for 8 yrs! Hopefully it won’t take me as long to have it printing. Right now I’m kinda struggling to connect it to my laptop, but I won’t give up.
Cheers from France and again, thank you VERY much !
V.
Hey Adam, thanks a bunch for your answer ! I’ll admit I’m a total and absolute noob, but I’m motivated and hopefully it won’t take me 8 more years to have it printing !
Cheers,
V.
Hello Michael, and thanks so much for this. It seems I should be able to find all the inofrmation I need following the links you provided 
Once I have it and running, I’ll share with you guys my very first print-out .
Again, thank you VERY much !
Cheers,
V.
It looks like you did a great job assembling it! Don’t worry about being a noob; we all started from the same place… you will do just fine.
I had about as much fun playing with the printer itself as I did printing from it; this is what my Ares looks like today after adding many different parts. I added a new extruder, thermal plate, power supply, control screen, and other parts. I love seeing the contrast between an out-of-the-box Ares and one that has been through hell and back!
Connecting is one of more confusing pieces. That’s why I wrote 3 pieces 
Two in Ares (OctoPi) Notes for Mac Users - Google Docs, and Connect to Ares (OctoPi) by Cable - Google Docs. The latter touches both Windows and Mac if you don’t want to wire from your home router for the initial setup. If you can easily wire the printer to the router and are relatively familiar with your router’s setup, Easy Arts’ A Simplified User Guide - Google Drive is a better place to start than their full users manual User Manual21051203.pdf - Google Drive. (If you can wire, the real prerequisite is that all Ethernet connections are offered DHCP by the router. This is usually the default setup in a home router. But different brands may call this feature different things.)