CaDA Solar System C71004W

I was so happy to buy this set since I am a big space/astronomy fan, love JK Brickworks' creations and even built a mini version of a working orery myself out of LEGO bricks. But the complexity, accuracy and love to detail with this CaDA set is simply on a next level. I also like that it's ready for motorization and does not include power functions, helping people like me who already have the motor and battery box at home. The building experience is superb, the play feature is cool, the educational value is great, the price is even better and it looks good on display too. It's a perfect set!

Been wanting to part this Orrery by the great JK Brickwork's for a couple years now, but then stumbled onto this licensed kit.
FIVE STARS!
Pro's...
- Nice box-art all around. Especially front embossed/raised imagery. Inner box has nice schematic graphics too.
- Very thorough instruction. Step by step approach on par with Mega-Construx.
- Unusual unique brick separator. Handy.
- Large base has good weight to it. Better for handling and moving about than JK's original base design. Can grip and hold easier while using crank/handle.
- Brick quality like Mega Construx. Clutch similar and very good.
- The gold elements have nice look.
- Good quality stickers/graphics.
- A great build, satisfying and enjoyable. Complex yet fairly simple to build. Fun.
- JK's design of the Earth and continents at this small scale.
- Spins rotates smoothly.
- Improves on JK's original design with he himself reworking it.
- Gives hope that CaDA will produce more of JK's designs. Especially hoping for his '2001: A Space Odyssey' Discovery ship.
- Item delivered safe and sound (just a couple of slight dents on the corners of the item's box) in about 3+ weeks to U.S.A.
- Great price.
- HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

Con's...
- Stickers. Not necessarily bad but on placement of the months on the ring of gold slopes, some can be placed crooked if not careful.
Some of those areas on the ring don't have sturdy clutch so pressing down on the element to place stickers can snap off the element from their plates and hinges.
- Not as good as Lego quality bricks/elements but dang close. Very close.
- Bag 1 corresponded with the first part of the build accurately, but for bag's 2 and 3 you'd need to open all of them and organize your parts for the rest of the build. I enjoy this, but if you're looking for the Lego style of each bag going in order, this kit's bags 2 and 3 don't follow in that fashion.
- Even though on box says 8+, kid's around this age would find it difficult to push certain pins into place, and with the style of instructions would miss some pin placements, etc. Definitely needs adult supervision for kid builders 8 to 12.
- Weight of the large boom, slightly droops that part of the model. Not bad, barely noticeable.
- Originally after ordering no tracking provided, only way to communicate then was to leave a poor review but the Double Eagle site had good communication, got back to me promptly, after that review, on where the package was en-route.

I build it up with my 5 Year old son to explaine the whole earth, sun and moon thing.

Complete!
Works fine!
Very educational!
Few parts hard to put together, more important, hard to take apart!
No reaction to e-mail question

I am a big fan of JK Brickworks and decided to go off brand for the first time with this set. The instructions were clear and the parts were high quality, although slightly less clear and slightly lower quality than you might get elsewhere. Some parts had small scratches on them, the bag contents were grouped by shape rather than step of the build, and the instruction book was missing a few safety checks like "Don't assemble it this way" that might be useful to some as the build is very complex and small errors are likely. Overall I am very impressed and this is a great value, I would definitely buy another model from CaDA.

It's a good official set based of one of JK Brickworks design.
Looks deciend & would make a good display piece with pretty neat mechanisms to demonstrate the earth's & moon's orbits.
Plus it's ready to be moterize, just remove the crank & plug in a compatible motor.\

Most of the bricks are good & nearly on par with lego but there are some issues I did encounter.
First is the hinge pieces used to assemble the shape with the dates, way too much friction.
Luckly since they only there to provide shape, meaning it's not really an issue for this model.

Second the red 2x2 circle bricks, some of the axil holes are off angle & the couple that's I personally had left for use with the moon had the holes off angle.
It was bad enough that I could imagine the earth spontaneously exploding, so I ended up replacing it with a couple of Lego bricks.

Anyway, great job to JK Brickworks & Cada.

beautiful realistic piece!

Awesome and beautiful set

Me and my 7 year old had a blast. Was very impressed with the quality of these "off brand" bricks. My only issue was the packaging of the pieces wasn't based around the instructions but rather the type of pieces. This meant all of the packages had to be opened before you even got to the second booklet.

Great fun to make, and amazing to see the engineering come together into an amazing final piece. Everyone who has seen it is blown away!