Precision forecasting of grinding wheel Wear: A TransBiGRU model for advanced industrial predictive maintenance

•A grinding wheel wear prediction method based on deep learning was proposed.•The accuracy of prediction is improved significantly by using multi-model fusion.•Grinding wheel wear prediction using a low-cost current sensor. In intelligent manufacturing, accurate prediction of grinding wheel wear is essential to reduce maintenance costs and improve production efficiency. To achieve accurate forecasts, this paper introduces a grinding wheel wear prediction model, TransBiGRU, incorporating a Transformer encoder, Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (BiGRU), positional encoding layer, and position-wise feedforward layer. The model extracts features by analyzing current signal characteristics in basic statistical, time, and frequency domains during the machining process. Training is conducted through K-fold cross-validation to ensure model stability. The experimental results indicate that the model achieved good performance with Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and Coefficient of Determination (R2) evaluation metrics, obtaining values of 2.0898, 3.262, and 0.9338, respectively. Systematically reducing modules validates the importance of each module in enhancing predictive capabilities. This research achieves the practical application of low-cost current sensors in optimizing maintenance plans and reducing downtime in predicting grinding wheel wear.