The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2023
ChompSaw: a power tool for young kids that cuts cardboard with a guarded hole punch
ChompSaw reframes the power tool as a guarded high-speed hole punch, letting children cut real cardboard freely while the nibbled scraps collect in a tray.
ChompShop
What it had to solve
Scissors and safety blades are either dull or risky, and freeform curved cuts usually mean jigsaws and scroll saws that are too dangerous for children. Product designers Kausi Raman and Max Liechty wanted a tool that lets kids cut real cardboard into any shape — with the danger engineered out of the mechanism itself.
How it works
Children's crafting tools sit at an awkward midpoint: blunt scissors cannot follow a curve, and anything sharp enough to cut well is too dangerous to hand over. Raman and Liechty's insight was that the answer was not a safer blade but no blade at all — a power tool that cuts cardboard through a fundamentally different mechanism.
The ChompSaw looks like a small benchtop machine with a puck-shaped head. Inside, a cutter oscillates rapidly up and down, punching out tiny half-moon bites of cardboard as the child guides it along a drawn line — closer to a hole punch than a saw. Because the cutting happens underneath the guard, fingers never reach the working head, and the nibbled scraps collect in a tray instead of scattering. The tool only cuts cardboard and softer sheet materials, keeping the performance envelope simple enough to make safe.
The idea found its market fast: the October 2023 Kickstarter raised nearly $1.2 million from over 5,000 backers, and the company added another $1 million in outside funding with $2.1 million in first-year pre-orders. A Season 16 Shark Tank appearance in November 2024 closed a deal with Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner, and the holiday season after the show brought more than 12,000 fulfilled orders as parents and educators adopted the tool for cardboard projects.
Why it lands
- Safety came from mechanism, not supervision: an oscillating cutter behind a guard removes the hazard instead of warning children about it.
- The tool fit an existing need — makerspaces, classrooms and parents with a pile of Amazon boxes and no safe way to cut them.
- A narrow material range (cardboard and soft sheets) let the designers guarantee performance and safety instead of chasing a general-purpose cutter.
- Scrap collection made the tool pleasant to use at a child's table, removing the mess that would otherwise keep adults from letting kids run it.
What it did
A Kickstarter campaign in October 2023 hit its goal in under half an hour and raised almost $1.2 million from more than 5,000 backers, with another $1 million raised outside crowdfunding and $2.1 million in pre-orders in the first year. After a November 2024 Shark Tank appearance, ChompShop took a deal from Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner and fulfilled more than 12,000 holiday orders, positioning the ChompSaw as a classroom-ready maker tool.
What you can take
When a tool is unsafe, redesign the mechanism instead of the rules around it: replacing spinning blades with a guarded oscillating punch gives children real power tools that are safe by construction.
Since then
After Shark Tank, ChompShop grew from a single product into a small crafting ecosystem, adding a cardboard hole punch, a scoring tool and an Inventor's Workbook, while co-founders Raman and Liechty settled into CEO and CTO roles. The company built a community of more than 150,000 followers on both Instagram and TikTok with short how-to videos, and pushed the ChompSaw into classrooms with free project guides — establishing a niche for genuinely kid-safe power tools.
Sources
- What Happened To The ChompSaw From Shark Tank Season 16?
- The ChompSaw: A Benchtop Power Tool That's Safe for Kids to Use
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