The Team Behind HIMill D1/D1S — MAXMAKE
Hi everyone, I’m Ash Wang, CEO of MAXMAKE. Today, I want to share our journey with all of you.
Many friends have asked us: “Why did you create the HiMill D1/D1S?” The answer actually lies in every step we’ve taken along the way. Today, I want to slow down and chat with our old friends—from our early “tinkering days” to our new ventures, I want to share every part of the story with you.
I studied mechanical automation. After graduating from college in 2014, I got into graduate school and moved to Shanghai with my luggage. Back then, I always thought “there must be more interesting things beyond textbooks.” Luckily, I came across a startup team working on a mechanical project, so I jumped right in and became an assistant mechanical engineer on the team. Even now, when I think back to the winter of 2015, I can still recall the excitement of touching a 3D printer back then were always clogging, so I spent hours in the workshop taking it apart, putting it back together, and fixing it repeatedly. Those days were tiring but fulfilling, and they really made me fall in love with the feeling of “turning ideas into physical things”
Picture1: The 3D printer I used back then was a second-hand one we had.
Fast forward to 2016, we got our hands on our first 60W 6040 CO₂ laser cutter. To figure out how it worked, we followed tutorials and learned to adjust the laser path little by little. Later, we made all kinds of small items with it—from wooden badges to acrylic decorations—and every finished piece filled us with excitement. Then we added a desktop CNC machine to our setup, and finally, we had the complete “maker’s trifecta.” During that time, we were working on a small desktop robotic arm project. Watching the arm complete movements precisely, we couldn’t help but feel like we were “half-geeks” ourselves.
Picture2: Laser machine & CNC machine
Picture3 : The desktop robotic arm we developed
Unfortunately, good times didn’t last long. In the second half of 2016, the original team disbanded. My partner Ike Wen and I felt really reluctant—we still hadn’t done everything we wanted to do! So we gritted our teeth, teamed up again, and started a new small team. Back then, both of us loved One Hundred Years of Solitude, so we named our company “marxmake” (a transliteration of “Márquez,” the author’s last name). Looking back now, we had almost no resources, but we had this stubborn drive to “keep going”—and somehow, the future didn’t feel scary at all.
Picture 4: Company Logo on the Wall Made by Laser Cutting
In 2017, we “tinkered together” in a small workshop and built our first ever in-house desktop CNC machine. To be honest, there’s a little regret here: because I was fully focused on this machine, I never officially graduated from graduate school. But the moment I saw the finished CNC, all that regret faded away—it had a design we absolutely loved, and we have to give a big thank you to CHEN HAN, founder of our dear friend BeaverLAB, who helped us with the exterior design. BeaverLAB is amazing too—they make so many cool optical products. If you’re interested, check out their website ( beaverlabtech.com )—you won’t be disappointed!
Picture5: The first desktop CNC product ICNCV3
In 2018, we designed another desktop CO₂ laser product. At that time, demand for this type of product in Chinese households was still low, so we focused on schools instead—and surprisingly, this machine was really well-received. For the first time, our team achieved “genuine break-even.” That’s when we felt: all the “random tinkering” we’d done before had finally given us the confidence to keep moving forward.
Picture 6: The first desktop CO2 Laser machine Product
In the years that followed, we never dared to slow down—we kept pushing and launched several new products:
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2020: We built a desktop form machine, with a 1200W heating platform and a 300x200mm working area, perfect for simple thermoforming projects.
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2021: We released a floor-standing CO₂ laser cutter, featuring an 80W laser tube and a large 1000x600mm working area, ideal for more complex cutting tasks.
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2022: We developed a CNC machine with ATC (Auto Tool Changer), boasting a 300x245x130mm working area—this was a big leap in both precision and efficiency.
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2023: We launched a diode blue laser engraver, available in 10W and 20W versions, with a 600x400mm working area and much finer engraving results.
Picture 7: Products in Recent Years
But as we kept going, we slowly realized a problem: we’d been too caught up in our own little world—we were so focused on building products that we didn’t communicate well with the outside, and we failed to keep up with everyone’s new needs. It’s true that we felt anxious, but more than that, we felt determined to “turn things around.” In 2024, our entire team took a step back and focused on transforming our approach. Then in 2025, we finally stepped onto the Kickstarter stage with our brand-new HiMill D1/D1S CNC.
Picture 8: HiMill D1/D1S
Building the HiMill D1/D1S isn’t just “launching a new product”—it’s more like a “report card” for our journey over the years. It carries the technical experience we’ve accumulated, our reflections on “falling behind the world,” and most importantly, our desire to “add a little bit of our own flavor to the world.” The road ahead is still long, and we hope to keep walking with our old friends—hearing your ideas and sharing our new stories along the way.
Since we’ve always focused on making desktop tools, we wanted our brand name to align better with this focus. That’s why we changed “marxmake” to “maxmake”—we want to take the “make” in our brand to the extreme.
Picture 9: Company Hand-Painted Poster in Winter 2022