Day 16: We got lots of great news today! Our machine shop scheduling issues have been resolved! Thanks to Transformix Engineering and McLaughlin Hall at Queen’s University!
Our orders have been coming in so we’re unpacking boxes, and moving forward with our plans. The biggest excitement came when boxes of electrical components were unpacked.
“OOOOH!!! pushy button switchy thingies!” -Elizabeth, grade 12
In other great news, we got some machining done today! Thanks to our Queen’s mentors who spent lots of time in the shop and accomplished so much.
When the pieces came back to our work room, we deburred…
…and labelled the parts.
There’s more machining to come in the next few days. Here’s another cool part that we’re using for our robot. 
Does anyone know what it is?
There were MORE smiles when we had a surprise snack delivery! We love it when parents experiment with making large quantities of food, and show up at our door. 
“The muffins are SO DELICIOUS!” -Liam, grade 9
The oranges were so good, we couldn’t stop smiling!
After snack time we got back to work putting together the wheel assemblies for our robot. Working together is always more fun!
We got to work on our top secret project
A few snips later and it looked like this.
Some more secret business involves our strategy for flipping the bridge down. We’ve been working for a few days to develop a good idea. Today we moved our sketches onto CAD.
Some shenanigans took place repeatedly today. Over the course of the evening almost everyone ended up trapped at one time or another. Here’s proof that even a Tweedle can get caught! Despite being caught, the Tweedle is still smiling!
A Tweedle in a Trap!
We worked hard to modify some of our robot structure and try some new ideas. There are some creative ideas that we’ve been working on. Look at this…we even smile while we’re sawing!
Part way through our work session today we took a time out to learn about talking with the public, particularly to judges and to the media. We are lucky that CKWS TV, our local TV station is interested in following us through build season, checking in from time to time, watching our robot grow and develop, and watching us come together as a team.
We look forward to the opportunity to share FIRST Robotics with the rest of Kingston!
