Dross attachment estimation in the laser-cutting process via Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)

Laser cutting of metals offers the advantage of high precision and accuracy. Dross attachment, measured as the length of the re-solidified material perpendicular to the surface, has definitely the highest impact on the overall process quality. Dross attachment is commonly judged by skilled technicians that evaluate the cut quality. Process parameters are optimized to maximize the cutting speed while keeping an acceptable level of dross attachment. However, in practice, increased levels of dross may occur due to different processing conditions. In this framework, a real-time dross attachment monitoring system is desired. Within the stream of vision based monitoring systems, in this work we use high frequency images generated by a precision camera, mounted on the laser head, to capture the cutting process light emission. A CNN-based classification system is developed, where captured images are fed into the trained network with the aim of automatically recognize if a predetermined dross attachment level is exceeded. To our best knowledge, this is the first work where a CNN is used for monitoring the quality of laser cutting process via dross attachment classification.