Energy density is often used as a metric to compare components manufactured with Selective Laser Melting (SLM) under different sets of deposition parameters (e.g., laser power, scan speed, layer thickness, etc.). We present a brief review of the current literature on additive manufacturing of 316L stainless steel (SS) related to input parameter scaling relations. From previously published work we identified a range of Volumetric Energy Density (VED) values that should lead to deposition of fully dense parts. In order to corroborate these data, we designed a series of experiments to investigate the reliability of VED as a design parameter by comparing single tracks of 316L SS deposited with variable deposition parameters. Our results show the suitability of VED as a design parameter to describe SLM to be limited to a narrow band of applicability, which is attributed to the inability of this parameter to capture the complex physics of the melt pool. Caution should be exercised when using VED as a design parameter for SLM. Display omitted •Volumetric Energy Density (VED) affects track shape, values lower than 100 J/mm3 are insufficient to fully melt the alloy.•Surprisingly, under some conditions, tracks deposited with sufficiently high VED values still had an undesirable morphology.•VED fails to capture melt pool physics, hence it poorly predicts both melting condition and track morphology.