Setting different axis limits for each facet in ggplot2 not using scales = “free”

Question

The general solution that I would like is to be able to specify arbitrary axis limits for each facet independently.

Basic functionality is obtained by setting the sc

Answer 1

Before this is closed, I think it is important to expand the suggestion by @Axeman : this may not be possible with facet_wrap directly, but the behavior can be achieved by chunking the groups you want and stitching them together with cowplot. Here, I separated into "low" and "high" quality, but the grouping is arbitrary and could be whatever you wanted. Likely want to mess with the style a bit, but the default from cowplot is acceptable for this purpose:

library(cowplot)

lowQ <- 
  ggplot(diamonds %>%
           filter(as.numeric(clarity) <= 4)
         , aes(x = carat
               , y = price)) +
  geom_point() +
  facet_wrap(~clarity
             , nrow = 1)  


hiQ <- 
  ggplot(diamonds %>%
           filter(as.numeric(clarity) > 4)
         , aes(x = carat
               , y = price)) +
  geom_point() +
  facet_wrap(~clarity
             , nrow = 1)

plot_grid(lowQ, hiQ, nrow = 2)