Multimodal learning of melt pool dynamics in laser powder bed fusion
This work addresses cost-effective, real-time monitoring for additive manufacturing, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing sensor and neural network methods.
The paper tackles predicting melt pool dynamics in laser powder bed fusion by proposing a multimodal data fusion approach that combines high-fidelity X-ray data with low-fidelity absorptivity data, resulting in improved prediction accuracy compared to using either modality alone and enabling inference with only absorptivity data.
While multiple sensors are used for real-time monitoring in additive manufacturing, not all provide practical or reliable process insights. For example, high-speed X-ray imaging offers valuable spatial information about subsurface melt pool behavior but is costly and impractical for most industrial settings. In contrast, absorptivity data from low-cost photodiodes correlate with melt pool dynamics but is often too noisy for accurate prediction when used alone. In this paper, we propose a multimodal data fusion approach for predicting melt pool dynamics by combining high-fidelity X-ray data with low-fidelity absorptivity data in the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) process. Our multimodal learning framework integrates convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for spatial feature extraction from X-ray data with recurrent neural networks (RNNs) for temporal feature extraction from absorptivity signals, using an early fusion strategy. The multimodal model is further used as a transfer learning model to fine-tune the RNN model that can predict melt pool dynamics only with absorptivity, with greater accuracy compared to the multimodal model. Results show that training with both modalities significantly improves prediction accuracy compared to using either modality alone. Furthermore, once trained, the model can infer melt pool characteristics using only absorptivity data, eliminating the need for expensive X-ray imaging. This multimodal fusion approach enables cost-effective, real-time monitoring and has broad applicability in additive manufacturing.