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The questions so far are pretty strongly geared towards hobbyist/consumer FFF machines. That's not necessarily bad, since that's where most legit questions will come from. (Not much reason to ask questions about a plug-and-play industrial machine.) But it's a pretty important scope distinction. So far, askers are not really providing enough technology/make/model info to tell what kind of equipment they're running. An experienced expert can tell by context what the intention is, but that's not really scalable.

Sub-questions:

  1. Will other AM technologies like SLA/DLP be included? If so, a pretty rigorous clarification and tagging effort will be required to separate out these other technologies.
  2. Are industrial machines in scope?
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I think all additive manufacturing techniques should be in scope. Given their popularity with consumers, most questions will naturally be regarding FDM printers. I don't see why that should rule out other techniques though: SLA machines are becoming increasingly accessible, and I think there's a $5000 SLS machine on the horizon.

I don't see any reason to rule out industrial machines either. With the current user base those questions might go unanswered but there's no reason this site couldn't attract industry experts when it goes public.

I do agree that questions should specify the make/model of 3D printer the question relates to if it's not obvious from the context.

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  • $\begingroup$ I think requiring explicit flagging of technology is going to be the way to go here. $\endgroup$
    – Ryan Carlyle
    Jan 21, 2016 at 20:38
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In technology, today's big iron is tomorrows desktop toys. I don't see any purpose in creating an explicit moratorium against bigger industrial applications in this space.

"The questions so far…" are only a limited sampling from a closed private beta running about two weeks. I don't know how comprehensive this site will become, but let's be careful about starting in on a rule set anticipating problems that may never occur in actual practice.

See: Erring towards keeping these questions and let their longer track record decide if they belong.

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On the question/answer trajectory we're currently following, the group would be best titled "Consumer/Hobbyist FFF 3D Printing" and not just a generic "3D Printing" group. I think some pretty aggressive moderation / self-policing will be required to make people add the necessary tags to clarify this.

Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying we should only include hobbyist FDM printers, I'm saying we need to require clear labeling if we intend to serve more than one type of users.

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