One of the most important pieces of advice is to try to build within your capabilities. It sounds like a tautology and is therefore easy to overlook. To make it concrete, here's my team capability checklist:
Basics:
- Do you at least have these basic tools you will almost surely need?
- Wrenches
- Pliers
- Crimpers
- Screw drivers
- Drill
- Drill bits
- Taps
- Hack saw
Materials:
- Which materials do you know how to get?
- Aluminum bar/plate/tubing/angle/rod
- Steel bar/plate/tubing/angle/rod
- Titanium
- 80/20
- Wood
- Plastics (Lexan, HDPE, Delrin, etc.)
- Composites (fiberglass, carbon fiber, etc.)
- Other?
- How quickly can you get them?
- Which materials fit in your budget?
- Which materials do your members have experience working with?
Drafting:
- Does anyone know CAD?
- How about drafting by hand?
Machine shop:
- For each of mill/lathe/waterjet/laser:
- Can you do this in house?
- Do you have someplace you could send it?
- How long will it take?
- What sort of accuracy can you get?
- For 3d printing: All of the above, plus:
- What are your material options?
- How strong is it?
- Do you have access to welding? What type? Which materials can you work with? Turn around times?
- Do you have access to anodizing or powder coating? What kind? How long is the turn around?
- Can you work with sheet metal?
- Do you know how to design it?
- Do you have access to a shear and a break? What size?
Electrical:
- How long would it take your team to wire a doorbell?
- Could your team build a basic low-pass filter?
- Do you know how to make a custom PCB?
Programming:
- How many students know your chosen programming language? And how well?
- How many mentors? And how well?
I recomend actually writing down estimates for each of these questions. Every team's resources have limitations. You should know what your team's are.
A teams that understands what they can do well will do better than a team with more resources that doesn't know how to use them. Most of the wooden robots that I've seen have been above average.