Effect of substrate material on the microstructure, texture, phase and hardness of a Ti-48Al-2Cr-2Nb alloy processed by laser melting deposition (LMD) was investigated. With the increase of the number of deposited layers, the microstructure of the deposited layers changes from basket structure to equiaxed structure and finally evolves into lamellar structure, and α2 (Ti3Al) phase decreases and γ (TiAl) phase increases gradually. Different TiAl alloy layers show different microhardness. With the increase of the number of deposited layers, the microhardness decreases. The findings would be a valuable reference for fabricating TiAl components with acceptable microstructure, texture, phase compositions and microhardness by LMD.