High-tech breakfast

ARLINGTON, Wash. — Brett Sarver, a high school teacher in this small town north of Everett, had just the project to show a vocational education advisory board what his students were capable of accomplishing — a robot waffle fixer.

The contraption assembled by Jesse Klein, 18, before he completed high school recently toasts the waffle, then seizes it with a five-pronged mechanical jaw that places in on a plate, which is moved by a mechanical arm to successive points for a dab of butter, a squeeze of syrup and a gob of whipped cream.

“I just added whipped cream for the fun of it,” said Klein, who works at Diesel Electric Supplies in Oso.

To make the device he applied principles he learned four hears ago in Steve VanValkenburg’s agricultural mechanics class.

He completed it for a class assignment last spring, using parts he and his father made in a family workshop.

“You want to see what we are getting out of these students after all that time and money,” VanValkenburg said. “Jesse is evidence that students have learned something.”

One thing Klein says he learned is that he’d prefer that the robot turn out a different product.

“I would rather have it make ice cream sundaes,” he said.