Energy consumption forecasting for laser manufacturing of large artifacts based on fusionable transfer learning

Abstract

This study presents an energy consumption (EC) forecasting method for laser melting manufacturing of metal artifacts based on fusionable transfer learning (FTL). To predict the EC of manufacturing products, particularly from scale-down to scale-up, a general paradigm was first developed by categorizing the overall process into three main sub-steps. The operating electrical power was further formulated as a combinatorial function, based on which an operator learning network was adopted to fit the nonlinear relations between the fabricating arguments and EC. Parallel-arranged networks were constructed to investigate the impacts of fabrication variables and devices on power. Considering the interconnections among these factors, the outputs of the neural networks were blended and fused to jointly predict the electrical power. Most innovatively, large artifacts can be decomposed into time-dependent laser-scanning trajectories, which can be further transformed into fusionable information via neural networks, inspired by large language model. Accordingly, transfer learning can deal with either scale-down or scale-up forecasting, namely, FTL with scalability within artifact structures. The effectiveness of the proposed FTL was verified through physical fabrication experiments via laser powder bed fusion. The relative error of the average and overall EC predictions based on FTL was maintained below 0.83%. The melting fusion quality was examined using metallographic diagrams. The proposed FTL framework can forecast the EC of scaled structures, which is particularly helpful in price estimation and quotation of large metal products towards carbon peaking and carbon neutrality.