If you're looking at bringing a new piece of equipment into the space, here are great questions to ask:


  1.  General Logistics Questions:

    1. What are the operational requirements for this piece of equipment?  

    2. While we have compressed air, argon, and exhaust capacity in this area, are there things that aren't listed that we need?  

    3. Does it have a non-standard (120vac, 480vac are our standards) power requirement?

    4. Does it require water, plumbing, or have additional cooling or heating requirements (water cooling counts)?
    5. What is the size of the unit, how will it be delivered, how will it be packaged (pallet/box/ups/truck/etc)?
    6. What is the lead time for acquiring this unit?  Do we have the infrastructure in place for the equipment already?
  2. General Operational Questions:
    1. What are the operational costs associated with running this equipment?  Are there any consumables that your equipment regularly needs? 
      1. if so, are they common materials? 
      2. if not, what is the lead time for them from order to door and are is the supply chain stable?
    2.  With the operational costs and consumables factored in, how do we bill our members for this use?  Is it per-minute, per-item, or other?  Do we get meaningful reporting in an accepted standard for this (json, xml, etc?)?  
    3. Do we have a way to enforce organizational requirements (education?  training?  safety?) so that only authorized users can run this equipment?  
    4. If this equipment requires two individuals (safety or compliance), how do we enforce the two person rule?
    5. Is there a way to accurately meter this equipment so that we can properly bill for it?
  3. IT Needs
    1. What software or other technological needs does this hardware require?
    2. Does the hardware require a network connection?
      1. Is there a wired connection?
      2. is there a wireless connection?  If so, what bands does this equipment use?
      3. If this is an online device, will the device handle being on a different vlan than the user's vlan?
      4. If this device uses an external server, do we have the ability to host that locally?  If not, what firewall or other outgoing connections does this require? What is your privacy policy? What is your security policy and what is your vulnerability reporting program look like?
      5. If it stores user generated data, how do we ensure that we/our members maintain control of their intellectual property?
    3. Does the equipment gracefully handle losing all power without notice?
    4. Does the equipment support Linux as a desktop operating systems?
    5. Does the equipment support open source operation