ArticlePublisher preview available
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract and Figures

As a promising modern technology, additive manufacturing (AM) has been receiving increasing research and industrial attention in the recent years. With its rapid development, the importance of quality monitoring in AM process has been recognized, which significantly affects the property of the manufactured parts. Since the conventional hand-crafted features for quality identification are generally costly, time-consuming and sensitive to noises, the intelligent data-driven automatic process monitoring methods are becoming more and more popular at present. This paper proposes a deep learning-based quality identification method for metal AM process. To alleviate the requirement for large amounts of high-quality labeled training data by most existing data-driven methods, an identification consistency-based approach is proposed to better explore the semi-supervised training data. The proposed method is able to achieve promising performance using limited supervised samples with low quality, such as noisy and blurred images. Experiments on a real-world metal AM dataset are implemented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which offers a promising tool for real industrial applications.
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing (2020) 31:2003–2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-020-01549-2
Quality analysis in metal additive manufacturing with deep learning
Xiang Li1,2 ·Xiaodong Jia1·Qibo Yang1·Jay Lee1
Received: 24 October 2019 / Accepted: 14 February 2020 / Published online: 25 February 2020
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
As a promising modern technology, additive manufacturing (AM) has been receiving increasing research and industrial
attention in the recent years. With its rapid development, the importance of quality monitoring in AM process has been
recognized, which significantly affects the property of the manufactured parts. Since the conventional hand-crafted features
for quality identification are generally costly, time-consuming and sensitive to noises, the intelligent data-driven automatic
process monitoring methods are becoming more and more popular at present. This paper proposes a deep learning-based
quality identification method for metal AM process. To alleviate the requirement for large amounts of high-quality labeled
training data by most existing data-driven methods, an identification consistency-based approach is proposed to better explore
the semi-supervised training data. The proposed method is able to achieve promising performance using limited supervised
samples with low quality, such as noisy and blurred images. Experiments on a real-world metal AM dataset are implemented
to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which offers a promising tool for real industrial applications.
Keywords Additive manufacturing ·Process monitoring ·Quality identification ·Deep learning ·Low-quality data
Introduction
In the recent years, additive manufacturing (AM) techniques
have been emerging as one of the most promising manufac-
turing technologies in a wide variety of application scenarios
(Kwon et al. 2018; Tapia and Elwany 2014;Huetal.2019;
Zhao and Guo 2019; Gonzalez-Val et al. 2019), such as auto-
motive, aerospace, robotics, electronics etc. AM which is also
popularly known as 3D printing, free-form fabrication and
rapid prototyping, has been receiving increasing academic
and industrial attention, since it is capable of manufacturing
highly sophisticated and fully functional 3D objects that are
difficult to be accomplished by conventional manufacturing
approaches (Everton et al. 2016). This novel technology has
the potential to largely reduce the existing constraints on the
geometrical design, accelerate the production time and min-
imize the manufacturing cost.
BXiang Li
xiangli@mail.neu.edu.cn
1Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering,
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA
2Key Laboratory of Vibration and Control of Aero-Propulsion
System Ministry of Education, Northeastern University,
Shenyang 110819, China
Currently, different AM methods have been developed,
including material extrusion, sheet lamination, directed
energy deposition, material jetting, powder bed fusion etc.
Among them, the powder bed fusion (PBF) approach has
been one of the most popular methods in metal part addi-
tive manufacturing (Chua et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2018).
Generally, metallic powder is spread over the previous lay-
ers during the AM process, and a laser is usually used as
the energy source to achieve the metallic bonding between
layers. In this study, the PBF process is investigated.
Despite the promising development of AM methods, the
main existing quality-related problems lie in the limited sta-
bility and repeatability of the mechanical properties of the
manufactured parts in production (Shevchik et al. 2019).
Generally, the part quality is directly influenced by the mate-
rial microstructure in the AM process, and the defects such
as porosity, residual stress and cracks are caused by a num-
ber of factors, including laser scanning speed, laser power,
hatch distance etc. Timely and accurate quality assessment
in AM process is of great importance in improving manu-
facturing quality and reducing industrial cost (Kwon et al.
2018). However, it is challenging for real implementation of
the assessment due to the high complexity of the involved
physics covering a wide range of practical factors.
123
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... The first steps in this direction are already reported in the recent works. Li et al. [20] proposed a novel method based on semi-supervised learning for a specialized convolutional neural network. The distinctive feature of this work is the introduction of a data consistency measure that allows reduction of the training set and use low quality data. ...
... The latter are sensitive to a broad number of surface anomalies, also making possible semi-supervised operation modality. Both works [21,22] require limited datasets to train appropriate Gaussian mixtures [20] or filters [21], respectively. In 2022, Pandiyan et al, [23] proposed a cutting edge generative adversarial network to detect defects with AE, allowing to reduce the training sets without losing classification efficiency. ...
... In contrast to the stable keyhole mode from scenario one, this case was obtained by using a significantly lower scanning speed that led to a formation of a higher recoil pressure in the keyhole, thus, resulting in the instabilities of its geometry and the formation of so-called "keyhole pores" [42,43]. As already mentioned, pores are a hidden threat that negatively affects the mechanical properties of the parts [13,18,20], making their detection of utmost importance. To examine the porosity formation, a set of samples consisting of single tracks with a length of 40 mm was fabricated with a nominal laser power of 150 W and a scanning speed of 50 mm/s. ...
Article
Full-text available
Metal additive manufacturing is a recent breakthrough technology that promises automated production of complex geometric shapes at low operating costs. However, its potential is not yet fully exploited due to the low reproducibility of quality in mass production. The monitoring of parts quality directly during manufacturing promises to solve this problem, while machine learning showed efficient performance correlating versatile manufacturing measurements with different quality grades. Today, most monitoring algorithms are based on semi-or supervised learning, thus, requiring a collection and ground-truth validation of training sets. This is costly and time consuming in real-life conditions. Our work is a feasibility study of the application of unsupervised machine learning to monitor different manufacturing regimes and quality in metal additive manufacturing. The algorithm combines the kernel Bayes rule for inference and Bayesian adaptive resonance for structuring the incoming data. Airborne acoustic emission from laser powder bed fusion is used as an algorithm input. The recognition of the main manufacturing regimes (conduction mode, stable, and unstable keyholes) are shown on real-life data, while the self-learning accuracy of developed algorithm exceeds 88%. Our approach promises future development of plug-and-play quality monitoring systems for laser processing technology, requiring minimum modifications of the existing machines, reducing time/cost for algorithm preparation and providing continuous data driven adaptation of the algorithm to changes in manufacturing conditions.
... Literature [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] summarizes the defects monitored in the FDM process and methods used for classification. Literature [25][26][27][28][29] describes the in-process monitoring techniques to identify defects caused due to changes in parameters. Literature [30,31] summarizes deep learning-based image capturing techniques for defect detection. ...
Article
Full-text available
Additive manufacturing (AM) is the most extensively researched area considering the advantages and impact that would be made when commercialized. The reason additive manufacturing is not being widely used in industrial applications is due to the defects they produce, causing dimensional inaccuracy. These problems could be rectified or minimized by optimizing the process parameters. A few parameters could be controlled during the printing process, while a few printing process needs to be corrected step by step. However, in this study, error is not rectified, though it has been prevented from growing into a bigger problem. Once the error occurs, the user can decide whether the error is within acceptable range or not. If the error is within the acceptable range, the user can continue the printing process. If not, the entire printing process could be stopped with only a minimal amount of time and material wastage. The defect being monitored in this study is based on the layer thickness of the part. Since the layer thickness of a part majorly affects the mechanical properties of the part, the primary objective of this study would be monitoring the layer height of the 3D-printed part. Three-layer thickness values 0.1 mm, 0.2 mm, and 0.3 mm have been considered for this study with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) as the filament. A deep learning algorithm is used to develop a model for predicting the occurrence of layer defects during the printing of part.
... The deep learning model is the best technology to be used within healthcare systems and industrial zones. This system can use its layers to identify metal good for storage and human living habitats (Li et al. 2020b). Deep learning methods have impacted machine learning-based bioinformatics applications as a means of providing the ability to learn complex nonlinear relationships (Biba, Vajjhala, and Rakshit 2022). ...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: Recently, vast generational modern AI techniques have facilitated developments for accessing digital healthcare diagnosis with capabilities of detecting illnesses. Problem: There exists a lot of scepticism for e-health couple with high similarities on health symptoms which hinder text data analysis for remote diagnosis limiting remote services and affecting tech development. Objective: This research investigates and substantiates opportunities associated with computational leverage of text data analytics and cognitive extraction of knowledge insights to improve healthcare outcomes. Significance: The study presents an overview of public, an integrated deep learning (DL), and AI knowledge graph (KG) for healthcare accessibility of remote diagnostics with NLP assist. Method: This research applied both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Questionnaires were used to understand the computational analytics and cognitive extraction of AI knowledge graphs on healthcare data. Also, an AI model was built to detect, diagnose based on text data and streamline five (5) related disease symptoms for each given text input. Results: The result of the survey was tested with hypotheses of H1, H2, H3, H4, H5. Results show that deep learning models and knowledge graphs can effectively lead to a well-defined class of data classification. Our model also exhibits a tremendous level of acceptable prediction of health symptoms based on text data. The significant group was accepted as an identified health issue and the non-significant was identified as a non-health issue. Conclusion: The study concludes that a well-defined system based on a rigorous ethical healthcare standard can easily support determining a feasible remote diagnosis.
... complex multi-scale physics, making it susceptible to defects even with slight variations [8,9]. Consequently, ensuring the quality of the final fabricated part becomes a challenging task [10]. To address this, it is essential to incorporate real-time monitoring during the L-DED process to achieve early warning and waste reduction, thereby laying the foundation for feedback control in subsequent stages [8,11]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Laser directed energy deposition (L-DED) has emerged as a promising technique for rapid prototyping due to its cost-effectiveness and efficiency. However, the intricate and multi-scale physics of the process hinder its widespread application. This paper addresses the challenge by focusing on real-time identification of melt pool states to detect defects early and minimize resource wastage. To achieve this, a FixConvNeXt model was developed for fast and accurate monitoring of melt pool states. This model was trained using 5000 melt pool images captured during the printing of single-track deposits from a charge-coupled device. To evaluate its performance, FixConvNeXt was compared with other models using various metrics. Experimental results demonstrated that FixConvNeXt achieved superior performance in accurately identifying melt pool states with 99.1% accuracy, while also reducing computation burden and processing time. The mechanism of classification by FixConvNeXt was explained using gradient-weighted class activation mapping. The research findings highlight the potential application of online process monitoring in L-DED. This study lays the foundation for future development of an efficient deep learning network for automatic defect detection and feedback control.
... This facilitates prompt adjustments, cutting down on waste and enhancing product dependability. By using ML to monitor and control AM processes in real-time, components can be manufactured with greater consistency and quality [112]. DL algorithms can analyze images from in-situ monitoring systems to detect defects in real-time, allowing for immediate corrective actions. ...
Article
Full-text available
The manufacturing sector has undergone a transformation due to additive manufacturing (AM), which makes it possible to create intricate, personalized items with little wastage of materials. However, the optimization and enhancement of AM processes remain a challenge due to the intricacies involved in design, material selection, and process parameters. This review explores the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL) techniques to improve and innovate within the field of AM. AI-driven design optimization procedures offer innovative solutions for 3-D printing of complex geometries and lightweight structures. By leveraging machine learning (ML) algorithms, these procedures analyze extensive data from previous manufacturing processes to enhance efficiency and productivity. ML models facilitate automation in design and production by learning from historical data and identifying intricate patterns that human operators might miss. Deep learning (DL) further augments this capacity by utilizing sophisticated neural networks to manage and interpret complex information, providing deeper insights into the manufacturing process. The integration of AI, ML, and DL into additive manufacturing enables the creation of optimized, lightweight components which are crucial for reducing fuel consumption in automotive and aviation industries. These advanced AI techniques not only optimize design and production processes but also enhance predictive modeling for process optimization and defect detection, leading to improved performance and reduced manufacturing costs. Therefore, integration of AI, ML, and DL into additive manufacturing not only improve precision in component fabrication, and enable advanced material design innovations but also opens up new possibilities for innovation in product design and material science. This review paper discusses and highlights significant advancements, and identifies future directions for the application of AI, ML, and DL in AM. By leveraging these technologies, the additive manufacturing processes can achieve unprecedented levels of precision, customization, and productivity in order to be analyzed and modified.
... Considering the thermal behaviors, the prediction accuracy was improved compared with other statistical models. Li et al. [9] proposed a deep learning model to identify quality through weld feature quality. They conducted semi-supervised classification based on welding features with low-quality data. ...
Article
Since surface quality is influenced by many factors in the additive manufacturing (AM) process and the relationships among these factors are so complex, it is difficult to represent and control them. With the rapid development of graph representation, graphs have become a popular method to represent complex relationships. Many embedding learning methods are correspondingly proposed to extract the information and discover new relationships. As a result, this paper presents a novel heterogeneous hypergraph learning framework to learn the embeddings and reconstruct the graph for AM process analysis and optimization. In the framework, an additive manufacturing experimental dataset is used to generate a heterogeneous hypergraph. Hence, a novel heterogeneous hypergraph embedding learning method, named exp2vec is proposed to obtain a low-dimensional representation of the graph, in which hyperedge embedding is added to improve the embedding learning performance. These embeddings are fed into a generative model, named variational graph auto-encoder with correction (VGAE-Corr) to reconstruct the graph for link prediction. A series of experiments on a heterogeneous hypergraph for AM are conducted. The results show the superiority of the proposed model regarding link prediction performance. A case study shows that the new model has the ability to analyze surface quality and process optimization.
... Measuring the quality of a process can be a tedious and expensive task, whether it is done manually by experts [48], [49], [50] or through post-processing techniques like Computed Tomography (CT) scans [51], [52], or visual inspections [53], especially when done between build layers [52]. Wu et al. [48] devised a meticulous quality evaluation technique based on the three-sigma approach that classifies quality into four tiers, separated by the frequency of spatters. ...
Article
Full-text available
Additive manufacturing (AM) has undergone significant development over the past decades, resulting in vast amounts of data that carry valuable information. Numerous research studies have been conducted to extract insights from AM data and utilize it for optimizing various aspects such as the manufacturing process, supply chain, and real-time monitoring. Data integration into proposed digital twin frameworks and the application of machine learning techniques is expected to play pivotal roles in advancing AM in the future. In this paper, we provide an overview of machine learning and digital twin-assisted AM. On one hand, we discuss the research domain and highlight the machine-learning methods utilized in this field, including material analysis, design optimization, process parameter optimization, defect detection and monitoring, and sustainability. On the other hand, we examine the status of digital twin-assisted AM from the current research status to the technical approach and offer insights into future developments and perspectives in this area. This review paper aims to examine present research and development in the convergence of big data, machine learning, and digital twin-assisted AM. Although there are numerous review papers on machine learning for additive manufacturing and others on digital twins for AM, no existing paper has considered how these concepts are intrinsically connected and interrelated. Our paper is the first to integrate the three concepts big data, machine learning, and digital twins and propose a cohesive framework for how they can work together to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and sustainability of AM processes. By exploring latest advancements and applications within these domains, our objective is to emphasize the potential advantages and future possibilities associated with integration of these technologies in AM.
Article
Full-text available
In robotic GMAW-based additive manufacturing, the surface evenness of the deposited layer was significant to the dimensional accuracy and the stable fabrication process, and it was determined by the multi-bead overlapping distance. To obtain the optimal overlapping distance, a group of two-bead overlapping experiments was conducted with different overlapping ratio. The cross-section shape was observed and the variation of the bead profile caused by the damming up of the previous bead was investigated. The second bead profile could be fitted by a rotated varying parabola or circular arc function with the decreasing of the overlapping distance from the initial single bead width (w) to 0. A varying cross-section profile overlapping model was developed based on the actual forming characteristics of the overlapping experiment, through which the varying profile of two overlapping beads with arbitrary distance could be predicted. Then, the optimal overlapping distance was calculated under some principles to achieve a relatively flat top surface and stable overlapping process, and the multi-bead overlapping experiments were performed to validate the model. The results showed that the model could achieve an excellent approximation to the actual overlapping experiment, and the good surface evenness and stable overlapping process was obtained, which was significant to the research into the appearance optimization in GMAW-based additive manufacturing.
Article
Full-text available
The extraction of meaningful features from the monitoring of laser processes is the foundation of new non-destructive quality inspection methods for the manufactured pieces, which has been and remains a growing interest in industry. We present ConvLBM, a novel approach to monitor Laser Based Manufacturing processes in real-time. ConvLBM uses a Convolutional Neural Network model to extract features and quality indicators from raw Medium Wavelength Infrared coaxial images. We demonstrate the ability of ConvLBM to represent process dynamics, and predict quality indicators in two scenarios: dilution estimation in Laser Metal Deposition, and location of defects in laser welding processes. Obtained results represent a breakthrough in the 3D printing of large metal parts, and in the quality control of welding processes. We are also releasing the first large dataset of annotated images of laser manufacturing.
Article
Full-text available
Single image dehazing has been a challenging problem which aims to recover clear images from hazy ones. The performance of existing image dehazing methods is limited by hand-designed features and priors. In this paper, we propose a multi-scale deep neural network for single image dehazing by learning the mapping between hazy images and their transmission maps. The proposed algorithm consists of a coarse-scale net which predicts a holistic transmission map based on the entire image, and a fine-scale net which refines dehazed results locally. To train the multi-scale deep network, we synthesize a dataset comprised of hazy images and corresponding transmission maps based on the NYU Depth dataset. In addition, we propose a holistic edge guided network to refine edges of the estimated transmission map. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods on both synthetic and real-world images in terms of quality and speed.
Article
Full-text available
AM, generally known as 3D printing, is a promising technology. Robotic AM enables the direct fabrication of products possessing complex geometry and high performance without extra support structures. Process planning of slicing and tool path generation has been a challenging issue due to geometric complexity, material property, etc. Simple and robust planar slicing has been widely researched and applied. However, support structures usually result in time-consuming and cost-expensive. Notwithstanding multi-direction slicing and non-planar slicing (curved layer slicing) have been proposed respectively to decrease support structures, capture some minute but critical features and improve the surface quality and part strength. There is no slicing method aiming at features of part’s sub-volumes. A comprehensive literature review is given first to illustrate the problems and features of available slicing methods better. Then, in order to combine the merits of planar and non-planar slicing to realize intelligent manufacturing further, this paper reports the concept and implementation of a mixed-layer adaptive slicing method for robotic AM. Different from applying planar slicing in any cases or adopting the decomposing and regrouping based multi-direction planar slicing for finding the optimal slicing directions, the proposed method mainly focuses on how to apply planar and non-planar slicing for each sub-volume according to the geometrical features. Additionally, the requirements for robotic AM equipment in possessing multi-mode of printing and slicing are investigated.
Article
Despite the recent advances of intelligent data-driven fault diagnosis methods on rotating machines, balanced training data for different machine health conditions are assumed in most studies. However, the signals in machine faulty states are usually difficult and expensive to collect, resulting in imbalanced training dataset in most cases. That significantly deteriorates the effectiveness of the existing data-driven approaches. This paper proposes a deep learning-based fault diagnosis method to address the imbalanced data problem by explicitly creating additional training data. Generative adversarial networks are firstly used to learn the mapping between the distributions of noise and real machinery temporal vibration data, and additional realistic fake samples can be generated to balance and further expand the available dataset afterwards. Through experiments on two rotating machinery datasets, it is validated that the data-driven methods can significantly benefit from the data augmentation, and the proposed method offers a promising tool on fault diagnosis with imbalanced training data.
Article
In the recent years, data-driven machinery fault diagnostic methods have been successfully developed, and the tasks where the training and testing data are from the same distribution have been well addressed. However, due to sensor malfunctions, the training and testing data can be collected at different places of machines, resulting in the feature space with significant distribution discrepancy. This challenging issue has received less attention in the current literature, and the existing approaches generally fail in such scenarios. This paper proposes a domain adaptation method for machinery fault diagnostics based on deep learning. Adversarial training is introduced for marginal domain fusion, and unsupervised parallel data are explored to achieve conditional distribution alignments with respect to different machine health conditions. Experiments on two rotating machinery datasets are carried out for validations. The results suggest the proposed method is promising to address the fault diagnostic tasks with data from different places of machines, further enhancing applicability of data-driven methods in real industries.
Article
Rotating machinery fault diagnosis problems have been well addressed when sufficient supervised data of the tested machine are available using the latest data-driven methods. However, it is still challenging to develop effective diagnostic method with insufficient training data, which is highly demanded in real industrial scenarios since high-quality data are usually difficult and expensive to collect. Considering the underlying similarities of rotating machines, data mining on different but related equipments potentially benefit the diagnostic performance on the target machine. Therefore, a novel transfer learning method for diagnostics based on deep learning is proposed in this paper, where the diagnostic knowledge learned from sufficient supervised data of multiple rotating machines is transferred to the target equipment with domain adversarial training. The experimental results on four datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and show it is feasible and promising to explore different datasets to improve diagnostic performance.
Article
Additive manufacturing (AM) is considered as a revolution in manufacturing. However, the high expectations face technical difficulties that prevent further penetration into wider industries. The main reason is the lack of process reproducibility and the absence of a reliable and cost-effective process monitoring. This paper is a supplement to existing studies in this field and proposes a unique combination of highly sensitive acoustic sensor and machine learning for process monitoring. The acoustic signals from a real powder-bed fusion AM process were collected using a fiber Bragg grating. The process parameters are intentionally tuned to achieve three levels of quality categories, which are related to the porosity contents inside the workpiece. The quality categories are defined as high, medium, and poor quality and their corresponding porosity contents are 0.07%, 0.30%, and 1.42%, respectively. Wavelet spectrograms of the signals and their encoded label representations, obtained from spectral clustering, are taken as features. A deep convolutional neural network is used to classify the features from each category and the classification accuracy ranges between 78% and 91%. Hence, the proposed method has significant industrial potentials for in situ and real-time quality monitoring of AM processes since it requires minimum modifications of commercially available industrial machines.
Article
Recent years have witnessed increasing popularity and development of deep learning spanning through various fields. Deep networks, and in particular convolutional neural network (CNN) have also achieved many state-of-the-art competition results in the intelligent fault diagnosis of mechanical systems. However, most of the existing studies have been performed with the assumption that the same distribution holds for both the training data and the test data, which is not in accord with situations in real diagnosis tasks. To tackle this problem, a transfer learning framework based on pre-trained CNN, which leverages the knowledge learned from the training data to facilitate diagnosing a new but similar task, is presented in this work. First, the CNN is trained on large datasets to learn the hierarchical features from the raw data. Then, the architecture and weights of the pre-trained CNN are transferred to new tasks with proper fine-tuning instead of training a network from scratch. To adapt the pre-trained CNN in a specific case, three transfer learning strategies are discussed and compared to investigate the applicability as well as the significance of feature transferability from the different levels of a deep structure. The case studies show that the proposed framework can transfer the features of the pre-trained CNN to boost the diagnosis performance on unseen machine conditions in terms of diverse working conditions and fault types.
Article
Purpose Part quality inspection is playing a critical role in the metal additive manufacturing (AM) industry. It produces a part quality analysis report which can be adopted to further improve the overall part quality. However, the part quality inspection process puts heavy reliance on the engineer’s background and experience. This manual process suffers from both low efficiency and potential errors and, therefore, cannot meet the requirement of real-time detection. The purpose of this paper is to look into a deep neural network, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), towards a robust method for online monitoring of AM parts. Design/methodology/approach The proposed online monitoring method relies on a deep CNN that takes a real metal AM part’s images as inputs and the part quality categories as network outputs. The authors validate the efficacy of the proposed methodology by recognizing the “beautiful-weld” category from material CoCrMo top surface images. The images of “beautiful-weld” parts that show even hatch lines and appropriate overlaps indicate a good quality of an AM part. Findings The classification accuracy of the developed method using limited information of a small local block of an image is 82 per cent. The classification accuracy using the full image and the ensemble of model outputs is 100 per cent. Originality/value A real-world data set of high resolution images of ASTM F75 I CoCrMo-based three-dimensional printed parts (Top surface images with magnification 63×) annotated with categories labels. Development of a CNN-based classification model for the supervised learning task of recognizing a “beautiful-weld” AM parts. The classification accuracy using the full image and the ensemble of model outputs is 100 per cent.