Digital twin-enabled 3D printer fault detection for smart additive manufacturing

Abstract

Early failure detection is required for Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D printers to reduce material waste. Typically, such systems are created based on images captured during printing or sensor data for tracking the extruder’s movement. This work presents a novel approach to sensor data-driven fault diagnosis, utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to investigate the temperature imbalance in the extruder and printing surface. First, a Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network (LCNN) is proposed to detect faults from sensory data. The model’s architecture concatenates the CNN layer to extract additional features, improving the model’s performance while maintaining a lightweight configuration suitable for real-time monitoring systems. Second, the concept of Digital Twin (DT) technology for FDM 3D printer fault detection is introduced. The DT creates a virtual representation of a physical object, and its functionality is validated by examining the network’s latency and System Overhead (SO) as the number of clients increases. The simulation results show that the proposed LCNN with a DT environment can effectively monitor, detect, and control the physical workplace with an F1-Score of 0.9981 and an average latency of 995.4253ms. Additionally, this research contributes to the development of future technologies for virtual condition monitoring of 3D printer abnormalities, which will be essential for intelligent and autonomous factories.