I was a mentor (mostly doing software) for a couple high schools, and I can also recommend this. Even as a mentor, I learned a lot from helping high school stud

I was a mentor (mostly doing software) for a couple high schools, and I can also recommend this. Even as a mentor, I learned a lot from helping high school students program their robot. They provide a nice platform to get you started, but you still have to do a lot of thinking and clever engineering to get it all built. The teams I was with did welding and created parts on CNC machines, but that's not necessary. Many teams build their robots out of purchased pre-fabricated parts. That's a much better way of doing things when your team is new. You get the task the robot is supposed to perform and the rules it needs to follow in January, and you have to build a working robot in about six weeks. Everyone is very busy, and there's a lot of things that go wrong as the thing gets built. Everyone learns a lot from the experience.