Machine learning based approach for surface roughness prediction in precision dental prototyping

Complex geometries achievable with resin-based 3D printing are susceptible to lower levels of surface roughness, particularly in areas where support structures are attached and removed. The slicing parameter serves as the cornerstone for developing a model for predicting the corresponding output. In the present research, a resin 3D printer is used to fabricate the specimens in accordance with the combination of important parameters that were recovered utilizing the design of the experiment (DoE). Layer thickness, infill population density, print angle, exposure time, and lift speed are the five factors used to build DoE, which consists of 32 ideal runs for assessing surface roughness (SR). SR is a critical factor that influences the durability and effectiveness of dental devices. In order to anticipate output, a model is developed. To choose the best modelling strategies, a comparison of three base model techniques, artificial neural networks (ANN), support-vector regression (SVR), and decision trees (DT), as well as two ensemble techniques, random forest (RF) and XGboost, is conducted. This work utilized hyperparameter tuning for model improvement and use RMSE and R² as performance metrices for model efficiency. This application is still relatively underrepresented in the literature and often with isolated ML models rather than hybrid approaches. Among the three base models, SVR performs best with R² and RMSE 0.96745 and 0.017974 at C = 5 and gamma = 1 resp. Ensemble techniques justifying clubbing perform better in all ways with XGboost showing R² 0.99858 and RMSE 0.00346998 as the best among all techniques. This work helps dental professionals in utilizing ensemble ML to improve model efficiency and predictability.