Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) has emerged as a core metal additive manufacturing technology for high-end sectors, including aerospace and medical device manufacturing. However, melting anomalies that occur during fabrication accumulate layer by layer, leading to degraded surface quality and impaired mechanical performance of as-built components—a critical bottleneck limiting their large-scale industrial adoption. Accurate and robust layer-wise melting quality recognition remains a challenge due to the complex surface morphologies induced by such melting anomalies. This study presents a machine learning-enabled in situ monitoring approach for layer-wise melting quality identification in L-PBF. By systematically varying laser power and scanning speed, 24 parameter combinations were designed to fabricate specimens with three distinct melting states: over-melting (OM), lack of fusion (LOF), and normal melting. A high-resolution complementary meta–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) camera was used to capture layer-wise surface images of the specimens, and following abnormal layer filtering and manual validation, a high-quality dataset comprising 5110 layer-wise images was constructed. Two mainstream machine learning approaches were systematically evaluated and optimized for melting quality classification: a support vector machine (SVM) model leveraging handcrafted gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) texture features achieved a classification accuracy of 96.77%, while a convolutional neural network (CNN) model with end-to-end feature learning directly from raw images attained a superior accuracy of 98.14%. In terms of computational efficiency, the CNN model exhibited a faster inference speed with a per-layer inference time of just 0.036 s, nearly half that of the SVM model (0.068 s per layer). Most critically, the CNN model completely eliminated fatal cross-class misclassification between OM and LOF—an error mode common in the SVM model that would trigger erroneous process corrective actions in practical industrial applications. The findings demonstrate that image-based machine learning provides a reliable technical foundation for intelligent in situ monitoring of the L-PBF process. With its high accuracy, strong robustness, and superior computational efficiency, the CNN model can effectively support on-site operational decision-making, reduce material and time losses, and enhance process stability in industrial settings, thus exhibiting significant potential for practical engineering deployment.