Working coils for electromagnetic forming processes need to comply with a wide list of
requirements such as durability, efficiency and a tailored pressure distribution. Due to its
unique combination of high strength and high electrical conductivity CuCr1Zr meets these
requirements and is a common material for coil turns. In combination with conventional coil
production processes like winding or waterjet cutting the use of this material is state of the
art. A promising approach for coil production is the use of additive manufacturing (AM)
processes. In comparison to conventional manufacturing processes, AM offers tremendous
advantages such as feature-integration e.g. undercuts or lattice structures. However, this
increased design freedom only leads to improved working coils if copper alloys with high
strength and high electrical conductivity such as CuCr1Zr can be processed. Due to the high
thermal conductivity and reflectivity the use of suchlike materials in additive manufacturing
processes is challenging. Considering the effects of the required pre- and post-processing
treatments for additive manufactured parts the need for research is further increased. The
objective of this paper is to develop a method for the qualification of CuCr1Zr for the
selective laser melting (SLM) process. This comprises the powder characterization, the
process parameter identification and the microstructure investigation of the generated test
geometries