- A large area that is separated into workshop space and carpeted space
- This space is at a school that has a metal working class so that some mills and lathes are provided
- A CNC mill and either a water jet machine or laser for large flat cuts
- A tig welder
- Students that have taken the metal working class before working on the bot
- Around ten computers with five or so preferably laptops, the laptops for programing, the desktops for CAD'ing.
- No more than that many computers so that none can be wasted on frivolities.
- Enough free carpet space for programing, and driver practice
- Enough old bots that several different drive systems can be practiced on with enough space to store them
- The team doesn't have its own space so it does have to clean up every day after working (the shop just gets too messy otherwise in addition that this doesn't take that long to do everyday)
- A teacher at the school who can use the equipment and is willing to pour their life into the team for at least 6 weeks a year
- A different mentor (whether teacher or not) who is very good at getting grants and can teach the kids the in and outs of getting money
However almost everything listed above should come after students that are dedicated, motivated, and most importantly interested and excited about building a new bot. For the first two years, the team I worked on was in a physics classroom that had no free space, no carpet, and our best tool was a hack saw, but the kids were extremely interested in building the bot and everything else, while still hard to work around, didn't seem as important.