Week 2 started out like any other week. With high spirits and a lot of teamwork, we were on schedule and having loads of fun! Unfortunately, starting on Wednesday, we were unable to meet for three days because of the ice on the roads. While this was definitely unfortunate for our team, there was a bright side to the whole situation. Firstly, we extended one of the meetings before the snow and ice hit. Secondly, we used the days we were stuck inside to wait for parts to arrive and to continue to work on spirit and marketing aspects. Of course, we also used the “break” and the cold as an excuse to enjoy a cup of tea! In the end, it almost evened out, and we went back to work at Magrathea (our build space) on Saturday.

Once the roads had cleared, we thought that things would return to normal. We were wrong. We had problems right at the start of our first meeting back. One of the holes for our chassis was not lining up with another hole. This would not usually be a huge problem, but redoing the part was not an option for us. Fortunately, we were able to salvage the error, but we had to make sure the problem did not occur again. The manufacturing error caused quite a bit of confusion as we were not sure what had gone wrong. We were positive everything was done properly as far as measurements and use of the tools goes. After some investigation, we realized that our drill press was broken. This news was not too surprising because we have had that drill press since the establishment of our team in 2010. While we did buy and set up a new and better drill press in time for the start of Week 3, we did lose quite a bit time pausing some of our building endeavors.

Despite those problems, we are on schedule and ready to finish the chassis and the rest of the robot!