It is safer to remove printed samples from the base plate before heat treating. I initially performed heat treatment without removing the sample from the base plate and I was unable to remove it by diamond wire cutting post heat treatment since the mechanical properties had changed due to heat treatment. This limited analysis tests.

Generally stress relieving is performed on combined build parts and base plate to reduce the residual stress. This allows you to cut the build parts from base plate without distorting the shape you have already printed. You can check the mechanical properties after stress relieving. If properties are not comparable to wrought counterparts then you need to plan for heat treatment. I have followed similar strategy for my work. There are no. of studies following the similar strategy. You can go through following reference-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmbbm.2021.104552

Immediate after receiving the part from the building unit, post heat treatment at low temperature is required, if there is any use of low-temperature support materials. Otherwise, according to the processing speed and building, we can choose the higher temperature for the relief of residual stress.

Thank you Sibusisiwe Motha, Saurabh Kumar Gupta, Dr.Ajit Behera for your valuable suggestions

You can check the following published paper for a detailed answer. This is a comprehensive study for the thermal post-processing of AlSi10Mg parts produced by selective laser melting.

Article Thermal Post-processing of AlSi10Mg parts produced by Select...

It depends on the material you are processing but the general recommendation is to do a stress relieve before cutting and the following treatments (e.g. solution annealing, precipitation hardening, etc.) after cut.

I invite you to check our paper, in which we compared the effect of stress relief with parts attached to the building platform on, among others, residual stress in laser powder bed fused IN718 alloy.

Article Impact of high temperature stress relieving on final propert...