Co-Cr-based alloys are biomaterials with a high corrosion and wear resistance. In this regard, promising materials that are characterized by a high recoverable strain and a Young’s modulus equal to that of human bones are Co-Cr-Al-Si alloys (CCAS). The envisaged application of CCAS as a biomaterial necessitates the identification of suitable thermomechanical processing routes. Due to the significant brittleness of these alloys, processing parts via Additive Manufacturing (AM) gained a lot of interest. Besides, biomedical parts are often shaped containing filigree material structures, which eventually are difficult to realize using classical machining approaches. Therefore, in present work CCAS prealloyed bulk material is gas atomized and additively processed via laser based powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M).

CCAS powder fraction with a particle size of 20-63 µm was used to process single-tracks under variation of laser power and scanning speed. Optical microscopy was performed on single-track top views and cross sections to determine track geometry and correlation between the track dimensions and process parameters. In addition, EBSD measurements were performed on selected single-tracks to determine the prevailing microstructure. The goal of this study is to identify a suitable processing window, i.e. a combination of laser power and speed as well as a hatch-distance and layer thickness, that allows for robust AM of CCAS.