The opening of new fields of application of powder-based additive manufacturing methods like selective laser beam melting of polymers (LBM) currently is hindered by the very limited availability of materials showing good processability. So far, basically only polyamide-based materials are available as optimized powder materials for LBM. Two innovative methods for production of spherical polymer microparticles for LBM polymers are presented: wet grinding with subsequent rounding in a heated downer reactor and melt emulsification. Moreover, the possibilities of dry coating to tailor particle properties are illustrated. The influence of particle and powder properties, like bulk density, shape or flowability on the LBM processability and on the properties of devices obtained from the powders are outlined. The first approach (stirred media milling and rounding) is applicable for a variety of polymers. Remarkably, product particles smaller than 10 microns also may be obtained for polymers of quite high breakage elongation. The dependency of product properties, (e.g. particle size distribution, shape, crystallinity) on the process parameters in the comminution and in the rounding step will be discussed for polyesters. The second approach (melt emulsification) allows for spherical polymer microparticles in a single process step. The dependency of powder properties on process parameters will be outlined exemplarily for the production of spherical polypropylene (PP) particles. PP powders of good flowability are obtained after spray drying of the product suspensions. The powders obtained by the two methods are characterized with respect to tensile strength, packing density and layer formation. Moreover the processabilty of the PP powder is proven by building single layers using a LBM device.