Day 31: Putting It All Together

bearse — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:41:09 +0000

Today we were excited to welcome the CKWS news into our workspace. We showed what we’ve been working on, and what a finished robot has looked like in the past.Some of our team were interviewed. We’re thankful for our media training sessions. CKWS will be filming again on Bag and Tag day, Feb. 21st at the warehouse at midnight. It will be exciting to see ourselves on TV, but we’ll have to wait until after the 21st! Many projects got worked on today. Chains are now adjusted…Support plates have been made…Gear boxes have been assembled…Motors are now on our chassis…And the wiring is in full swing.As in years past, we’re making an electrical box to house our components. We’re getting fancy with colour coding this year. The electrical box will be very pretty!Our whole robot will be very pretty this year. We can’t wait to see it in its final state. For now, we will be satisfied to admire the CAD on the computer screen. Families and friends are always impressed to see what we’ve been up to. Please feel free to drop by and have a look!We’re continuing to work hard, making parts and assembling our robot. Safety is very important–we all wear safety glasses in the back of our workspace.Some of us even wear them when we go for dinner! We’re starting a new fashion trend.

K-Bots: We’re meeting this weekend on Saturday and Sunday. This is a very critical weekend. We need all hands on deck to assemble the robot pieces. Be here, be positive, be productive, and be safe!

We also want to emphasize the importance of cleaning up!!If you do not clean up, you’ll have to wear the “apron of doom”

New Sponsors!

bearse — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:36:24 +0000

This week K-Botics would like to welcome JKL‘s continued sponsorship of our team at the silver level.

We’d also like to welcome Endetec as a new Bronze level sponsor.

Day 30: The Calm Before The Storm

bearse — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:38:19 +0000

Today we got some more machining and welding done on our parts. Before we know it, we’ll have all of the pieces, and have to scramble to put it together.With more welding comes more filing–It will be an exciting day when all of these pieces form a robot!Our bumpers got their angle today…Our chains are being tensioned…Our chairman’s team had a brainstorming session…Our programmers worked hard on getting the vision system working, and also getting our old robot for try-outs ready to drive in various configurations.Our super-top-secret project is continuing to grow larger every day……and we’re bending a whole lot of Lexan. We’ve got some little jobs around here perfect for some little fingers! We’re glad to have little friends come and work with. Although our team is feeling the time crunch, we’re still looking out for each other. There’s always time for a hug!

Day 29: Have you met Chain Man?

bearse — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:00:55 +0000

Today we finished up some loose ends with our Chairman’s essay. The deadline for Chairman’s and for some scholarships is quickly approaching.Meet chain-man, a new friend of our team. Chain-man was created when we dismantled our drive train for what must be the 10th time. Each time we reassemble it, we realize that something’s missing. We’re getting a lot of practice which will be very valuable for our pit crew!Our team has no machine shop access at school, so we’ve had to get lots of work done via our sponsors. We want to thank Transformix Engineering, one of our gold level sponsors, for helping us out with machining and welding today. We do have access to a bending machine at school, and we’ve been working with Lexan to make various robot parts. We need to carefully lay out the pieces, then cut them out.After we cut the Lexan, we need to file it smooth, and then we put it in the bender.We’re working also on our electrical system. Thanks to Kraftwerk for bending our electrical box for us this year. We’ll be installing our components and wiring things over the next few days.We’re grateful to parents and families who continue to support us as we work long hours building robots. Tonight we were fueled by quiche and ice cream sandwiches. Delicious!

We’re looking forward to another productive day tomorrow.

Day 28: Filing and Smiling

bearse — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:50:10 +0000

Today we worked hard on a variety of tasks. Some of us worked with sheet metal, laying out our parts according to their drawings.Others worked on soldering components onto the new circuit boards that came in the mail from our sponsor Advanced Circuits.We’re excited to have our name on our circuit boards!On the other side of the room, we knitted away on our top secret knitting project. Little by little, it is growing, thanks to the efforts of many knitters!More machining was done today at Queen’s University. We’re thankful to Queen’s for helping us get all of our machining done in such a short time.Of course, when we have new parts, there’s going to be a lot of filing. Some of us are experts at filing!

Filing and Smiling

We’re working on assembling our chassis and getting wheels turning. To do this, we needed to get our chains the right length. Thank goodness for our pre-season chain lessons!We cut pieces today for welding projects tomorrow. It takes a lot of planning to have everything done on time to be put together.All systems are important. We don’t want to forget pneumatics! We’re investigating what parts we have, and what parts we need.To help with our research, we examined the pneumatics from last year’s robot.Despite the long hours and the chaos of week 5, we’re still smiling!It’s Remi’s birthday. He’s smiling too!

Happy Birthday Remi

Day 27: Welded!

bearse — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:00:50 +0000

Many thanks to all who have been working to help us get our chassis welded together!

We spent time filing down the weld surface to make it nice and smooth. We put duct tape on the aluminum to make sure we didn’t file away our robot!With wheels and sprockets on, we attached our chain.Pretty soon, this robot’s going to be driving!We’re working hard to get all the needed parts to fit nicely within the frame. Sometimes those parts need a bit of filing too.Some of the parts needed a little bit more work. A few sparks flew!In other news, our circuit boards arrived from Advanced Circuits, so we got straight to work soldering on various components.It’s precision work, but when done with friends, the assembly line process is lots of fun.Another fun job is bending Lexan. We worked with a heat gun and bent various robot parts. It takes a lot of muscle power to make bends with large pieces.Programmers are working hard with the cameras and other sensors. We’re all going to be excited to get our hands on the 2012 robot to test out the code for real!For now, we’re using our 2010 robot for drive testing. We are dealing with a real opportunity for trouble shooting as we often need to fix bits and pieces.We want to thank our school principal for the wonderful pizza dinner. It’s great to have such support from our school community.After a long day of machining, our trusty mentors need some well deserved nap time. We might need to make our nest again soon.

remember this?

We also want to thank Richard, from Transformix for coming out to chat about our progress, and help us along. We appreciate the support of our sponsors.It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. Be prepared to stay late. We’ll see tomorrow if we need to do that.

Day 26: Productivity!

bearse — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:49:18 +0000

Today we worked really hard, because there were lots of jobs to do!We cheeseholed lots of metal……then we deburred and filed everything so nobody gets cut.We greased up some gears……then we reassembled the gears, with the help from a video.The case was cheeseholed too, so we had to tape it up so nothing will get in.Some of us started to work on our electrical box.While others did some physics.

Look JNo, it's cantlievered!

For a while it was getting pretty loud in the back of our room!Out in the hallway we continued to work on bumper painting.Painting is exhausting work!We were happy to share our workspace today with the Cyberfalcons FIRST team 3710 who brought a really cool piece of metal to show us!
It is so exciting for us to get our hands on the tools and start to make all the little pieces come together. It will be a very busy week. We may work later on Tuesday to assemble some major pieces of our robot.

K-Bots: Please fill in the competition roles form to indicate what you’d be interested in doing at competition.

Note: Testing for Drivers/Operators/Human Players includes skill with the robot/ball AND understanding the rules of the game. Time to study!

Day 25: While We Wait

bearse — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 04:30:08 +0000

Today we got caught up on some little jobs. We’re still waiting for our machining to be finished, and for our welding to be done. In the mean time, we painted more bumper numbers… …looked online for teaser videos to see how others are approaching the competition….We worked with programming some more…And, while all this was happening, part of our team met with CanAssist to get feedback on our Kare-bots initiative. We were glad of the good ideas our discussions produced, and we’ll be talking with them again in the near future to discuss details.We machined a few parts today. Most of our cheeseholes are now complete!

work in progress

Things wrapped up a little early this evening, but we’ll be back on track again tomorrow.

Day 24:Bumpers, bumpers, and more bumpers!

bearse — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:05:55 +0000

We started the day cutting out fabric for our bumpers.It’s so important to measure twice before cutting…We need to leave adequate seam allowance, and leftovers to staple to the plywood.We cut, sewed, and stapled, and then put the numbers on. To do this we use a stencil, and white pencil crayon to mark out the numbers. This is a job to do when everyone is awake and focused so numbers end up oriented properly.Fabric paint, in a squeeze bottle, is used to apply the border paint for the numbers. This is a job for someone with really steady hands. Once the numbers are outlined we’ll have a painting party to fill the numbers in. Painting within the lines is an important skill!

While the bumper making happened on one side of the room, we had a little machining going on in the back of the room.

We also spent time organizing our connectors……and making some last minute CAD edits.We’re also continuing with the Kare-bot production! We’re thrilled that Wool-Tyme Kingston has helped us to spread the word in their monthly newsletter. To knit Karebots please check out the pattern here.

FILL THIS OUT PLEASE K-BOTS!

bearse — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:00:05 +0000

What would you like to do at competition this season? Please read this form and fill it out before the end of the day on Sunday.

If you do not fill in the form, please do not complain about competition roles. This is your chance to give us input.