Intelligent pattern recognition of SLM machine energy data

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing process, in which the research has been increasing over the past few years to meet customer-specific requirements. Different parameters from the process and the machine components have been monitored in order to obtain vital information such as productivity of the machine and quality of the manufactured workpiece. The monitoring of parameters related to energy is also realized, but the utilisation of such data is usually performed for determining basic information, for instance, from energy consumption. By applying machine learning algorithms on these data, it is possible to identify not only the steps of the manufacturing process, but also its behaviour patterns. Along with these algorithms, evidences regarding the conditions of components and anomalies can be detected in the acquired data. The results can be used to point out the process errors and component faults and can be adopted to analyse the energy efficiency of the SLM process by comparing energy consumption of one single layer during the manufacturing of different components. Moreover, the state of the manufacturing process and the machine can be determined automatically and applied to predict failures in order to launch appropriate counter measures.