NSF Future Manufacturing Data Challenge: A Multimodal DED Dataset for Probabilistic Local Geometry Prediction in Laser Tracks

We introduce a multimodal directed energy deposition (DED) dataset for predicting the probabilistic local geometric variation of single laser tracks produced on stainless-steel 316L substrates. The dataset supports the NSF Future Manufacturing Data Challenge and contains three complementary modalities: in-situ thermal image sequences from a Stratonics ThermaViz melt-pool sensor, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images acquired using a Zeiss EVO MA10 system, and full-field height maps acquired using a Bruker ContourGT-K white-light 3D optical profilometer. Each experiment is a bead-on-plate scan at one of four laser powers, 200, 300, 350, and 400 W, with a fixed scan speed of 10 mm/s. The release includes starter notebooks, participant-facing code, and a multimodal coordinate convention that links thermal, SEM, and height-map measurements over a common physical 20-100 mm window.