**4. Conclusions**

This study demonstrates successful printing of SKD61 by the PBF method at an 800 mm/s laser speed. From the results, no obvious pile-up (due to *h f hmax* < 0.7) and no cracking on all indenter surfaces were observed. Hardness increased from 8.65 GPa to 9.93 GPa as the strain rate increased in a range of 0.002 s<sup>−</sup><sup>1</sup> and 0.1 s<sup>−</sup>1. At the same scan laser speed, the *m* value of PBF SKD61 ( *m* = 0.034) was higher than that of PBF H13 ( *m* = 0.028), indicating that the mechanical behavior of the PBF SKD61 was more critical to the strain rate compared to PBF H13. As a result, PBF processing for SKD61 shows higher potential in practical application than for H13 due to the superior microstructure and mechanical behavior of the former, and less laser energy consumption at the optimal condition.

**Author Contributions:** writing-original draft preparation, J.Y.; conceived and designed the experiments, V.L.N. and J.Y.; performed the experiments, J.C.; analyzed the date, D.-Y.Y., H.-S.L. and S.Y.; edited the paper, J.-H.Y.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
