We started off today by paying a visit to Custom Sheet Metal and met Ron, who took our DXF and titanium, and led us back to their waterjet machine, and we got to watch the Waterjet in action. It never occurred to us that there would be white sparks as the titanium was being cut, but then we've only seen polycarbonate being cut before. [More]

At this point in time (three weeks til Motorama) we have a finished antweight, a finished beetleweight, and two finished hobyweights. Still in progress are a fairyweight, an antweight, two beetleweights, a featherweight, and a sportsman. We changed our mind on the fairyweight design a couple of weeks ago, and we're not feeling entirely confident that the featherweight will survive it's first hit, but nonetheless we're pressing on! [More]

We were feeling pretty good this morning - we finished a 'bot yesterday, and will likely finish another today. We have everything we need to wrap up the build of our 12lb drumbot, so it's off to the Build Space and here we go! [More]

We received some parts today that mean we can get back to our cutest 'bot: Poor Punctuation 2.0, and see whether we can install the drive ESCs. Unfortunately this was going to mean soldering - never our favourite task - but we steeled ourselves to the task and decided to see where we can get to. [More]

We didn't get anything done over the weekend on the 'bots, as we had some pretty big issues to deal with at work, but this evening we decided to see if we could wrap up the antweight Poor Punctuation 2.0. We need to install the weapon speed controllers and finish the wiring - ugh. [More]

Okay - this is way too cool! Jerome Miles suggested we take a look at CamBam, which is a tool that takes a CAD drawing and allows you to specify what you want to do to the part with the mill, then it automatically generates the G-Code for you! How neat is that?? We created a DXF of the chassis base... [More]

We received some parts today that mean we can get back to our cutest 'bot: Poor Punctuation 2.0, and see whether we can install the drive ESCs. Unfortunately this was going to mean soldering - never our favourite task - but we steeled ourselves to the task and decided to see where we can get to. [More]

We spent some time sizing up the fairyweight opponents for Motorama 2012, and decided that a simple lifter wasn't going to cut it, so we needed something more offensive. We decided to go with a weaponed 'bot, using as many components as we already had available. [More]

Today is Martin Luther King Day, and our office is closed today, a double-bonus, especially after the BCP Test this past weekend, so after running some errands we hit the Build Space, determined to make some progress. [More]

We haven't made much progress this week, as we've been preparing for a Business Continuity Test that's happening tonight, but we're ready for it, and have a few hours free before the test starts, so it's time to hit the Build Space! [More]

With the drill press still out of commission, we're falling a little behind in our build schedule, but we found a few other things to be getting on with today, including a non-'bot-related job for a friend at work. [More]

Despite trying a number of V-belts from Grainger, we still hadn't found a decent replacement for the drill press, so we had to find other things to work on this weekend. We do have a lot of drilling and countersinking to do, and we're waiting for more parts to show up, so we decided to tackle the things we could actually finish without the drill press. [More]

Still feeling slowed and sluggish from this cold, we spent most of the day under the care of our favourite Alka Selzer Cold medicine, but by mid-afternoon felt like going and being quarantined in the Build Space - who knows, maybe we could screw some screws in or something. As it happened we were able to do a little more than that. [More]

Unfortunately we're at the end of our Christmas holiday, and still suffering from a horrendous cold, but we wanted to see whether we could get the New Year off to a productive start none-the-less. We elected to see whether we could get our hobbyweight drumbot to a driveable state. [More]