Selective laser melting (SLM) is a layer manufacturing process to fabricate 3D complex and functional parts directly from powder material. During the process, successive layers of powders are completely melted and consolidated by the energy of a high intensity laser beam. The process is capable of producing high-density parts having mechanical properties comparable to those of bulk materials. On the other hand, one of the major problems encountered in SLM is the poor surface quality. The high roughness of SLM (Ra typically 10-30 μm for iron-based powders) is a limitation of the process, among others for micromachining applications. In this study, the roughness enhancement in SLM is achieved by means of Selective Laser Erosion (SLE) and re-melting. SLE is a process to remove material mostly by evaporation due to the heat provided by the incident laser beam working in pulsed mode. In addition to SLE, laser re-melting of the top layer(s) is applied for titanium and stainless steel powders. Different scanning strategies and parameter sets are investigated for an optimized surface quality in terms of average and total roughness values.