A new calibration method of laser beam-direction was presented to implement any-orientation measurement for point laser sensors in reverse engineering. A calibration block whose calibration surface could be adjusted was designed to co-operate the calibration approach. During the calibration

the point laser sensor steped in an equal distance along X、Y、Z axes in the calibration surface

then the laser beam-direction could be confirmed according to the relationship between the stepping size and the length change of laser beam. Based on the CMM platform

the coordinate transformation process from the sensor coordinate system to the reference coordinate system was deduced when the point laser sensor was set in any-orientation

and the calibrating process was introduced in details. Finally

a comparison experiment on contact measurement and point laser measurement was carried out to verify the proposed method. Experimental results indicate that the error of the point laser sensor calibrated by the proposed method is (0.045 2±0.016 8) mm

which can satisfy the requirements of sampling accuracy in reverse engineering.