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
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.
…then made a template for our bear paws…
…we punched to mark the center of each circle….
…and then started to drill.
We lined up the holes pretty well this year…
..it is a precision operation!
There are lots of cheese holes to make, so we all took turns.
While not cheeseholing we occupied our time updating the media binder with our recent news coverage.
We drilled access holes to the valves for our wheels…
…and we displayed our Kare-bots in the main hallway at school.
CAD drawings got completed…
…we weighed our metal…17 pounds!
…and we took a trip to buy bumper material.
To burn off steam we took a break to practice throwing.
We’ll have human player tryouts after we have a bit more practice time.
The Tweedles showed us how to throw with great distance and accuracy. 
Programming work is coming along too. “We’re declaring Friends”-Mr. Wood
To make these parts we needed to go through quite a process. Drawings were made using CAD software.
The printed drawings, were then checked over
And then they were taken to Transformix for machining.
We turned all of our metal into much smaller parts.
Thanks to the machinists who made it happen!
When parts are completed, they need to be examined, and the sharp edges removed.
Looking at the pieces in this small cardboard box….we begin to wonder about the final size of the robot.
Meanwhile…back at KCVI. We had a visitor today who dropped by to get more yarn for 
We also had visitors who brought us our batteries from Florida. Thanks so much!
We devised a way to do tandem knitting. 2 knitters on one project is pretty cool stuff.
We did some bumper math calculations. Look at our reversible bumper instruction 
We looked at various sensors and how to use them effectively.
Our team had been working on a super top secret project for the past few days. We’ve made warm fuzzies for our mentors. Today they were delivered. Mentors are appreciated for the time and effort they put into our team.
Who doesn’t like warm fuzzies?! Why not thank a mentor today!
Programming needed a little tweaking to make the robot easier to drive.
It takes a little time to get used to the controls….
…and then it takes intense focus to drive the robot without hitting the cones. We saw a lot of promising drivers today! We’ll keep practicing, and have some driver tryouts in early February.
We’re organizing all of our tasks on our big organizational chalkboard. There is so much to do!
We’re working on our CAD drawings still. We’ve got lots of part drawings to get done before we can manufacture all of the parts. 
We’re prototyping various devices to manipulate the ramp. To make it more fun we split up into two teams (girls vs. boys) and had a competition.
We’re planning and measuring and cutting material carefully.
We’re working together, mentors and experienced team members are showing our rookies how to work safely.
It’s exciting to see our designs work well! Even if our designs don’t work well, we can learn from that.
We also get to meet family members…
…and welcome them into our big purple family. Family members love Tweedles as much as the rest of us!
After dinner we kept working on our prototypes for ramp manipulation. When tested on the ramp, the boys’ prototype was definitely the loudest, but the girls’ seemed to be a little more effective. Good work girls!
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.
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…
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?
“The muffins are SO DELICIOUS!” -Liam, grade 9
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!
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!
Some of our mentors are working very hard on their knitting. 
This season we’re knitting little hats to be give-away buttons for competitions. We’re known for our hats!
We had a wonderful ham supper from Jan and Ann tonight, and some special treats for Chinese New Year! 
After dinner, we got right back to work. Some of us are trying to get the camera code to work properly.
Our Chairman’s video is really starting to take shape. 
…and we had a great session to edit our Chairman’s essay.
Plenty of us are working on the very confusing bumper math. 
We’re trying to make reversible bumpers again this year, but in a slightly different configuration. It’s a pretty good math problem! We did lots of research today, and called different stores to source fabric and white Sharpie markers.
Our prototyping team is looking at various ways to manipulate the bridge. We’re coming up with some good ideas! It helps to work with such a big creative group.
For those of us who are in the know…this picture marks a rather momentous occasion. We’re starting to work on the next part.
Lots of us are tired out from long hours at robotics.
Nap time is much more comfy with bumpers as pillows!
We made LOTS of cookies!
We’re thankful to everyone who is pulling strings to help us out. We are lucky to have a great support system, including our own superhero!
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.
