BEHIND THE SCENES: From Broken Prototypes to Living Motion

“A jet stream, frozen in motion, waiting for your hand.”

SOME IDEAS JUST WON'T LET GO.

The night Leon finished the L6 engine model, his lamp was still on. The pistons clicked up and down, but his eyes weren't on them anymore. Weeks earlier, he had seen a video of a jet turbofan spinning - layer upon layer of blades rotating at different speeds, sometimes in opposite directions. It wasn't just mechanics; it was rhythm, like a symphony of gears.

He couldn't shake the thought: Could we bring that alive in bricks?

One morning, he sent us a sketch - half shaft, half dream, and a row of crooked question marks scribbled in the margins. “Might be tricky,” he wrote, “but it'd be fun.”

By then, his desk was already buried under piles of gears and axles. Compared to the V8 and L6, this wasn't a next step - it was an equation nobody else dared to solve. And that was exactly why Leon wanted it.

THE HARD PART WAS WORTH IT.

The first prototype looked promising. But when Leon spun the shaft, the blades went wild - some racing too fast, others barely moving, none in harmony. He rebuilt it. This time the whole thing locked up, jammed stiff like a rusted gate.

So he tore it down. Again. And again. His desk became a graveyard of broken windmills and tangled sketches. 

A turbofan's journey is long, and in a brick-built version, energy loss was inevitable. If power entered only from the tail, by the time it reached the front, the motion risked fading almost completely - especially without the help of a motor. 

Then came the blades. A real engine has rows upon rows, but in bricks, that wasn't possible. The largest could only hold about 8–12 blades, while smaller ones were reduced to silhouettes, never reaching the 20 or more of the original. The challenge didn't stop there: real blades taper in diameter, layer by layer, but with fixed brick sizes - 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 - perfect scaling simply couldn't exist. Even their thickness betrayed us, always thicker than the real steel slivers. And then, the question of speed: opposite directions were possible, but different speeds on the same shaft? Not without extra gear lines branching out, which would have broken the purity of the build. 

Each of these limits forced new decisions, new trade-offs, and new ways to capture essence without chasing the impossible.

Weeks later, a video appeared in our chat. The shaft turned smoothly, seven sections spinning in balance, layered like music. “Hear that?” Leon said, holding his phone closer. “It's talking now.”

DON'T HIDE WHAT'S BEAUTIFUL.

At first, Leon planned to cover it - just like the V8 and L6, with protective panels that could open and close. But each time he looked at the intricate blades and gear train, he hesitated.

“Why hide the part that makes it alive?” he finally said. So he ripped up the plan.

The new design left the front wide open, exposing every blade and every motion. The rear stayed armored, a nod to real aerospace engines, while the base was reshaped into a slimmer, suspended frame - less heavy, more sculptural.

Now, when you turn the crank, you don't just move the engine - you watch air itself take shape.

FROM VISION TO MODEL.

This wasn't just Leon's challenge. The whole team had to adapt:

The Project Lead explained, “We wanted to extend our engine series but give fans something new. Not another car engine - something bolder. We referenced the F-35 and WS-15 designs but adapted them for the limitations of building bricks.”

A Test Builder noted, “Some axle pins were hard to install at first - the structure didn't allow enough leverage. We optimized it, and now the assembly is smooth. Once built, the synchronized motion feels really satisfying.”

The Graphic Designer admitted, “Visually, it had to surpass the V8. That meant industrial, not just technical - like something you'd want displayed in a studio or living room. Balancing the contrast of light gray, black, and metallic parts in photos took countless lighting tests.”

Each step was a fight between realism and possibility. Some compromises were inevitable - real turbofans have dozens of ultra-thin blades, while bricks could only capture the form in fewer, thicker layers. Yet the result holds the soul of the engine, not just its shape.

IT MOVES BECAUSE IT'S MEANT TO.

From V8 to L6 to this Turbofan Engine (NF10317, 2216 pieces), we never built just for display. We built for motion - for that spark when mechanical design feels alive.

This model doesn't move because we forced it to. It moves because it was always meant to.

And when you finish building it yourself and turn that crank, maybe you'll hear it too - the heartbeat of gears finding harmony.