We have a long list of things to accomplish before packing up for competition. Thankfully most of these tasks are small, and have already been started or at least assigned to people. 
We’re making armour to hold sponsor logos…
…it is so important to thank everyone for all they have done to get us to this point in the season. 
While shooter testing continued, some last minute components were being machined at Transformix engineering.
Fingers crossed we’ll be able to add these 1.55lbs to the robot, and that the part will work as intended! Thursday’s moments of unbagging the robot will be dramatic and busy indeed, as we will need to attach various things, and modify various things before heading for inspection.
It’s an all-hands-on-deck meeting Tuesday after school to load up the trailer for competition, and check off everything on our list. T-Shirts should be ready for pick up as well.
We’d like to thank Allan for doing such a great job for us.
This afternoon we were excited to see our new friends, the leaders from the Pathfinder group that we visited yesterday! They came to see our robot and have a look around. We hope to arrange a visit for their pathfinder group in the spring.
We had more visitors this evening when our school hosted Grade 8 information night. Many grade 8 students toured our room and saw our 2009 robot on display in the library. We’re always game to show off our robot to an enthusiastic crowd!
We worked hard today putting more pieces onto our robot. Wheels are turning, and other components get added each day.
Thanks so much to Bruce at Transformix for all of the machining support this past week.
Outside in the hallway we continued our driver tryouts. Thanks to all who tried out for driver and operator this season. A list of competition roles will be posted soon.
We had so many treats today! Thanks so much to our supportive parents who take care of us so well. 
Thanks also to Mike for coming to visit us today. It’s always great to see members of our big purple family come back to lend their support during build season. 
This evening a small group of K-Bots went to a local Pathfinders meeting to do a workshop using LEGO robotics and to also teach them how to knit.
The LEGO robotics portion included putting together a robot and also programming it.
After a short time we had little robots spinning around and singing songs.
Knitters on the other side of the room were hard at work learning the skills of casting on, knitting and casting off. It takes great focus to get all of the steps in order!
Many thanks to the girls and their leaders for agreeing to make some 
Many thanks also for the gift of girl guide cookies!!
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.
If you do not clean up, you’ll have to wear the “apron of doom”
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!
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!
Others worked on soldering components onto the new circuit boards that came in the mail from our sponsor 
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!
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!
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.
It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. Be prepared to stay late. We’ll see tomorrow if we need to do that.
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.
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 
…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 
We machined a few parts today. 
Most of our cheeseholes are now complete!
