We’ve got new minibots, or at least minibots that are under construction. We want to thank Kraftwerk Manufacturing for helping us bend them to the right shape, and Queen’s University for helping with the waterjet cutting on a tight timeline.
M.E.L. (our Mobile Electric Loader) is now extra easy to move–she’s got a handle and wheels!
The next step is to mount the charging lights on the front, so we can see when our batteries are charged. We’re getting good at soldering this year.
We’re also getting good at drilling bear paws into our robot parts. Our minibot deployer was cheeseholed today.
After our bearing shipment comes in we’ll be ready to try out our new minibots.
At 6:00PM we were excited to see so many people arriving to take part in our fundraising test. We had 52 people in attendance, which gets us approximately $1500 more for our trip to the Championships. Parents, friends, high school students from our school and others, recent graduates, Queen’s students, teachers, nurses, and even some Cyberfalcon mentors!
Other adventures of the day included a tube throwing competition in the courtyard since teams and the semi-formal were taking over the gyms. The courtyard is not ideal–it’s too small, but at least it’s not windy. We’ve had some pretty good throws.
Our bear mascot has a fan in the head now. We’re working on making sure that nobody’s hair gets caught in it! Safety first!
Our CAD crew has been hard at work and will continue to work all weekend long. Drawing deadlines are coming up!
Our teachers and parent mentors spent lots of time figuring out how to mobilize our team and get carpools to Toronto. 
We also need to manage team clothing for all going on the trip. Some of our teammates were very helpful and folded and packaged up the rest of the t-shirts that needed to be distributed before GTR. Now everybody can finish packing! If you don’t have your shirts yet, you can pick them up tomorrow at our meeting! 
We are excited to see some new iron rings in the room. Our fourth year Queen’s University engineering students received their iron rings this past weekend and were eager to show them off. Congrats to JNo, Kevin and Drew for their accomplishments!
…we also had a barbeque! We had no idea what was in store for us until we opened the door and saw a remarkable sight. There were two BBQs set up, and also a kitchen stove (converted to run on propane). Many thanks to the Calligaris family for the feast!
Our robot is doing well, and has scored lots of tubes, even in autonomous mode!
We’re looking forward to seeing Frontenac’s team, the 
…but we’re all keeping busy with lots of little jobs. We’ve been busy finishing up our circuit boards…
…we make use of all little helpers we can find!
Our Queen’s mentors are on their reading week now, and we are glad that they are staying in town to help us out!
We’ve taken a second look at some things….including our minibot design. We’re calling it “Minibot Revisited”.
We look forward to seeing everyone at the warehouse soon! We work from 10AM-10PM today, Sunday and Monday too.
