The use of components produced with Additive manufacturing (AM) processes has grown significantly over the past decade, finding use in rapid prototyping, rapid manufacturing and functional end-usable products, allowing performance enhancement of lightweight parts. Selective laser melting (SLM), one of the most promising AM technologies, can be applied to build metal parts layer by layer within a powder bed system. In comparison to conventional casting, SLM enables the production of components with customizable shapes, increasing both freedom of design and material usage efficiency. This thesis focuses on the re-design for SLM manufacturing of the piston of a four-stroke engine originally produced with conventional processes and with AlCu4MgSi as constitutive material, with a particular focus on the selection of optimal parameters for the SLM process.