New Feature: Camera-Based LiDAR for Gantry Lasers 📌 Sticky

We've added a feature to RE5 for Gantry that turns hardware you already have into a high-accuracy focus sensor: Camera-Based LiDAR.

How it works

Mount a small red pointer on the laser head alongside your USB camera. RE5 watches where the red dot lands in the camera frame, and uses laser triangulation geometry to compute distance from the head to the workpiece. The further the red dot drifts in the camera view, the further (or closer) the surface is — turn that pixel offset into millimeters and you have a real distance sensor.

Accuracy: 0.1 mm focus accuracy across the working range.

Big benefit: no-contact distance measurement

Nothing touches the workpiece. Most autofocus solutions for gantry lasers rely on a contact probe or a feeler — slow, easy to break, and a hard no for soft, sticky, or finished surfaces (leather, vinyl, anodized parts, freshly-cut acrylic). Camera-Based LiDAR measures distance optically from above, so there's nothing to crash, nothing to damage the finish, and nothing to wear out. Just light.

Why it matters

Focus errors are the #1 source of bad jobs on a gantry — under-focused cuts don't go through, over-focused engraves look smeared. Until now the fix was either manual measuring, a contact probe (slow), or a real LiDAR sensor (expensive). Camera-Based LiDAR sits right in the middle: contactless, fast, accurate to 0.1 mm, and it works with the cameras and lasers most users already own.

FSL Camera + LiDAR Kit — available now

We've finished and listed the FSL-designed kit that pairs with this RE5 feature. It's the head-mounted USB camera with a custom low-distortion lens (engineered specifically for stitched bed-overview workflows so straight lines stay straight edge-to-edge) plus the matched visible red triangulation laser in a single bracket for the Titan and FSL Pro Laser (PS20 / PS24 / PS48). Drop it on, plug in USB, run the RE5 setup wizard, and the vision + LiDAR features light up immediately.

Product page: https://fslaser.com/products/re5-usb-head-mounted-camera-lidar-gantry — $2,499.

If you've already got a USB camera and a red pointer, the software side is live in RE5 for Gantry today — try it and share your accuracy numbers.