Day 12: We got right to work today on a variety of tasks. 
We’re getting a second driver station up and running so we can have drive practice before we hold tryouts later in the season. 
Meanwhile….on the other side of the room…a rather creative brainstorming process led to the inevitable conclusion that we needed to use “the force” to keep our robot together!
"lets hold our robot together using the force!"
We started to do some very premature pre-season scouting of the teams that will be at GTR East and Waterloo. We need our new team mates to start connecting team numbers to names and their histories.
CAD work was continued. We’re working on getting drawings done for our drive train.
We need to be careful with dimensioning and other specifications. There’s lots to learn!
Part of our team embarked on a great expedition today to the grocery store. Tomorrow we’re hosting our Parent Appreciation Pasta dinner, and we estimate 100 people will be there! There’s lots to do to get ready for such a large event. We made a menu plan and a grocery list. We researched quantities online for feeding so many people.
“5 lbs of ground beef….that’s like a baby cow!” -Sam, grade 10
We researched coupons and estimated how much dinner would cost. We then took a field trip through a blizzard to the grocery store. We got strange looks buying SO much food!
For future reference: we bought 5lbs of ground beef, 7 onions, 16 900g bags of pasta, 8L of tomato sauce, 6 cans of tomatoes, garlic, 12 peppers, 12 heads of lettuce, 4 heads of romaine, 4 cucumbers, 2 bags of spinach, 5 bottles of salad dressing, 6 carrots, green onions, 5 loaves of French bread, 5 cake mixes, cooking oil, 2 dozen eggs, 2 pounds of butter, 2kg of icing sugar…and all that cost around $140. 
We’ll start to cook right after school tomorrow!
In knitting news….we’ve got a new expert! Kare-bots are being knit EVERYWHERE!!!
our other knitting project is ongoing, and ever growing larger. It will be exciting to see it completed!
We’re having lots of fun with each other while we’re working hard on designing our robot. We are celebrating the small moments, like finding a heart candy with FIRST on it….
…and we’re developing bonds as a team….and inside jokes as well.
Come at me bro!
We work until 10 tomorrow. Our Pasta dinner starts at 6:30, but families are welcome to arrive early or stay late to see our progress.
Our new task today was to take the 3D CAD and produce 2D drawings which will be used when we need to manufacture some of our parts. We ran into a 
We had a really big CAD party and at the end of it our virtual robot is almost finished… Oh my gosh, it’s just like Tron!
We’ve continued working on a top-secret knitting projects, and we’ve started some hats for some of our newer members.
Our programmers have been working very hard, using our test chassis to decide how the controls will be laid out.
After modifying things, it’s really fun to drive the robot around!
We held a meeting right before lunch to discuss our latest outreach activity… we’re going global! After our meeting we ate a delicious lunch. Thanks parents for keeping us so happy and healthy! We couldn’t survive our hectic build season without your support.
After lunch, we split up into groups to work on various tasks that needed to be completed before the end of today.
…While others worked on CADing various parts of the robot, including the drive train and some other ideas we’re working on.
We’ll meet next at the usual time after school on Monday. Enjoy your day off to relax and do your homework!
Today we got the bridge done
We build Saturday from 10AM-6PM.
The field’s barrier was finished today! The field makers have been making excellent progress so far and we are very eager to see the completed field.
We decided to suspend a weight from a meter above our robot to mimic anything we might build up there, and then give it a try. We installed plywood chain guards to keep us all safe.
Some of us spent a great deal of time doing calculations, doing research and gathering our materials.
It’s nice to see things coming together so quickly! We look forward to making more progress on the field pieces tomorrow too.
We’ve had a bit of fun interpreting the drawings and putting LEGO together to construct the objects.
It was good to get everyone up to speed with some of the commands. We’ll do a follow up session next Tuesday at KCVI from 5:30-7:00.
Homework: In groups, divide up the parts of a joystick. Each member will CAD a part, and then we will assemble them together on Tuesday.
