I suggest every team watch
this video. It's team 40's video of prototyping with 1/3 scale robots.
It seems especially useful for protoyping and, more importantly, reveals those little aspects about what works and doesn't work in a game (Like how the ramp was more important than stacking in stack attack). It also creates some awesome exhibiton items and a few cool robots to show off in the pits.
My team recently stocked up on vex from radioshack specifically for to do this during the build season.