A quick word on robot progress: Over the weekend, our electrical crew was busy wiring up the new electrical box. This box is designed to fit under structural supports that will protect it in case of incidental contact with the bridge.
Today’s plan was focused on fundraising. We know that after St. Patrick’s day and the Iron Ring ceremony there are lots of bottles around Queen’s University campus. We had put up flyers, and despite the collection another group did the day before, were impressed with the quantity that was left for us to gather.
We are getting very good at sorting the glass and crushing the cans.
Some of us have now got drivers licenses, and can help with the collection on the streets, and the drop off to the beer store.
Did you know that a full pickup truck brings in about $100 in bottle money?
We found all sorts of bottles in the mix. This is the biggest bottle, being held by our smallest K-Bots!
Some cans even came with straws!
We raised over $500 for our efforts today! Great work everyone. Thanks go out to the many parents who drove, and mentors who organized the event. Thanks also to the many K-Bots who did the collecting and the sorting. Please wash your shirts before competition!
We met after school to organize our scouting supplies, pack the pit area, and tie up any loose ends related to the robot and its components. Thanks to Transformix for doing a last minute welding job for us! 
We got two deliveries today. One was from FESTO, bringing us pneumatics supplies and some cool swag to distribute at competition.
We also got our T-Shirt order today! K-Bots, please bring in your $10 (per shirt) tomorrow! Mentors got jerseys this year for Rebound Rumble. Thanks very much to all who helped organize our very large shirt order, and prepare the shirts for distribution.
Friends of K-Bots are always dropping by to see what’s going on. It’s hard to explain exactly what goes on at robotics, and much easier to invite friends to see for themselves.
As we design more robotic components, we’re finding that we’re needing to take lots of measurements to determine the optimal place to mount our appendages. We’re really glad the bag is clear!
We’re looking for any place we can to lose weight on the robot. Our programmers offered to cheesehole the code a bit to help out.
Our workspace is looking really great! We have tables put together and shelves waiting to be filled. It will be a much more organized place to work next season.
We’re working from 5-10 on Mon, Wed, Fri and from 10AM-6PM on Sat and Sun until competition.
We unloaded a truckload of boxes and carried them upstairs.
There’s not a lot of space in room 107 anymore! All of the old furniture is on one side of the room, and the new furniture is being assembled on the other side.
As we unpacked the boxes, some of us decided it would be fun to hide out inside.
Some of us weren’t so good at hiding.
Our bin racks are looking really great. We’re going to know where everything is soon!
There’s another storage rack for the wall. 
We started putting together the workbench frames. With a little teamwork it became an easy job.
Most of us are pretty skilled at assembling things with nuts and bolts.
Others resort to hammers to make pieces fit.
“I’m going to use a hammer, because my name is Kevin” -Mr. Wood
We are currently having a $5 old team shirt sale. There are limited sizes and styles available–first come first served.
With all of the assembly happening in our workroom, we ended up with a lot of boxes, which we stacked in the hallway.
Our stack of boxes quickly was transformed into the most incredible box fort that we’d ever seen. 
The fort was ruled by a king, queen, court jester and a horse. They survived and thrived, expanding their kingdom halfway down the hallway. They defended their realm against enemy clans, and maintained peace until it was time to collapse the boxes to be recycled.
Some of us ended up migrating naturally to room 107 anyway to hang out, knit Kare-bots, and discuss how much fun competition is going to be.
We were met with a surprise in the back of the room. Look at the space! It’s never been so clean back there!
We’re preparing for the installation of our new workbenches and storage system. Thanks so much to one of our K-Bot alumni, John, for helping out with the furniture moving. You never know what you’ll end up doing when you come back to visit during reading week!
After a few jokes about exercise and eating vegetables, we started having a serious discussion about how to reduce our robot weight. It seems that this time of year, we’re always trying to reach that magic number of 120 pounds
To do this, we’re going to be drilling a lot of holes, and making some tough decisions about what can remain on our robot. Some mentors have done calculations about just how many cheeseholes it takes to lose a single pound. Others speculated that shortening wires would make a similar difference. “4 inches of wire equals 1 cheese hole” -Kevin H. [we haven't seen the proof yet]
We drilled and deburred a lot of aluminum. “Deburring is a pain in the arm!” said our little helper.
We even cut holes out of our Lexan panels.
We’re investigating where it’s possible to take weight out of our electrical box. With a bit of finesse, we might just squeak by under the weight limit.
As we’re removing some components, we’re adding others. It’s a balancing act, deciding which features are necessary and which are extra.
Between discussions and machining, we took some breaks to complete homework and study for tests.
We also got a great head start on organizing our scouting binder for GTR East.
We completed the first phase of our super-top-secret project…
…and we ate a great spaghetti dinner.
It was really nice to have a special visitor join us on his 13th birthday!
We’ve already started packing up some of the essential tools.
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!
We’re getting a second driver station up and running so we can have drive practice before we hold tryouts later in the season. 
