In 2015, I went to Maker Faire Shenzhen and I wrote about Jasen Wang of Makeblock in Makezine:

Ten years later, I met Jasen in SF who stopped here after going to CES. His company, which was known for Makeblock, now also has the xTool product line, which he started in 2021 and was exhibiting at the January trade show.

We met for Sunday brunch, joined by with his colleague, Stein Shi, who is the relatively new general manager of their US office in Mountain View.

Table of Contents

• From MakeBlock to xTool

• Maker Faire Sardinia

• Reese’s law

From MakeBlock to xTool

Sometimes the government is like a tailwind that can push your business forward faster and other times it can be like a headwind that causes you to change course in a new direction.

Jasen Wang started Makeblock as a developer of educational construction kits around 2012, selling products like Mbot in the U.S. and China. He was doing well until around 2020 when the education market in China changed, causing a downturn in business. Makeblock had about 500 employees at the time and Jasen saw his revenues plummet.

He tried a few different new product ideas that didn’t catch on. One was a kit subscription product. He began work on developing laser engravers and laser cutters. He released a laser cutter for the market in the first quarter of 2021 but it didn’t have a good market fit. “I believed in this new direction but a lot of the people (who work for me) didn’t believe in it.” The number of employees dropped in half.

Jasen said he’s always wanted to “build tools that help people create.” He identified a new market outside of education, hobbyists, small businesses and home-based crafters - the people who have a side hustle making things and selling them. xTool was born with a viable product in Q4 2021 - a desktop laser cutter.

The breakthrough for xTool was using new 5 watt diode lasers, and combining them to get a more powerful 40-watt cutting tool. Machines like their S1 product were smaller and cheaper than laser cutters using C02 lasers. We reviewed the S1 laser cutter in Make: Volume 89, page 123. Caleb Kraft wrote that he was “highly impressed” by the machine and he would recommend it based on its price point over base C02 lasers.

In the upcoming issue of Make:, Vol 92, Matt Stultz writes in an overview of laser cutters that “the real standout in the industry right now is xTool. They are creating an entire ecosystem of incredible lasers and products that help support them.” Matt was also excited about their new screen printing system that replaces the traditional process of making a screen for printmaking with a laser-etched screen.

So, Jasen was able to make a successful pivot from education to an adjacent market and develop a new set of tools to serve new customers. Now, however, the headwind is not coming from China but from the new US administration. Anticipating that they will impose tariffs on his Shenzhen-made product line, he recently bought a factory in Thailand to be able remain competitive in the US.

Jasen wrote me after we met. “We are a company born out of the Maker Movement, and I’m deeply passionate about it.” He was wanted to add that despite the issues, he’s “equally passionate about education.” It was great re-connecting with Jasen.

Maker Faire Sardinia

We are in the process of collecting photos and videos from 2024 Maker Faires for our second Maker Faire Yearbook. The above photo from Maker Faire Sardinia caught my eye. Antonia Burrai and Fab Lab Olbia organize Maker Faire Sardinia, which was held in April of 2024. Looking at the above photo, Jen Blakeslee who runs the Global Maker Faire program commented:

Here’s their official video:

Reese’s law

This week, I was talking to Steph Piper, author of our Skill Seeker: Maker Edition book, and she mentioned Reece’s law. Steph is also Maker Queen and she produces kid-friendly kits in Australia but sells them also in the US. Now, she is having to redesign her kits because of Reece’s law, which went into effect on September 21, 2024.

“The purpose of Reese's Law is to protect children six years old and younger against hazards associated with the ingestion of button cell or coin batteries during reasonably foreseeable use or misuse conditions.” The law requires warning labels but it also requires “special packaging, meaning child-resistant packaging, for button cell or coin batteries.”

Steph, like other kit makers, ships coin cell batteries to power electronics kits such as LED badges. Now the battery itself must be fully enclosed so that it can’t be easily removed. Steph said it is a real challenge to do on some of her kits.

I asked Rob Bullington who runs our Maker Shed what he’s doing about Reese’s law. He works with Diego Fonstad on some of our kits and he said that “Diego is cleverly coming up with 3D printed pieces that artfully blend in to secure the battery.” An example is shown below.

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