In March 2023, I had three quotes on my desk for what I thought was the same Faro system. Same model name. Same basic specs. Three numbers that couldn’t be more different: $98,000, $126,000, and $152,000.
I was proud of that spreadsheet. I’d spent a week building it. Then a Faro applications engineer asked me one simple question, and I realized I’d been comparing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
Here’s the story of how I got there—and what it cost me in time, budget, and some very awkward meetings.
How I Talked Myself Into a Laser Tracker
I’m a manufacturing engineer at a mid-sized fab shop in the upper Midwest. We build large aluminum frames for automotive prototype programs—the kind of parts that are 4 to 6 meters long. In late 2022, our quality manager flagged a growing problem: the stationary CMM we’d had for years couldn’t handle parts that big, and customers were asking for measurement reports we couldn’t produce.
I volunteered to lead the equipment search. I’d been at the company for eight years, had bought plenty of tooling, and figured this was just another procurement project. How hard could it be?
Pretty hard, as it turns out.
My first move was the usual one: I typed “faro vantage laser tracker price” into Google, hoping for a ballpark number. If you’ve done the same search, you know what you get—a wall of “Request a Quote” buttons and spec-sheet PDFs. No prices. It’s like trying to figure out what a car costs by reading the brochure.
So I did what everyone does in that situation. I reached out to a distributor and asked directly. And that’s where the trouble started.
Mistake #1: I Asked for the Right Product for the Wrong Reasons
The distributor was helpful, fast, and did exactly what I asked. That was the problem.
The three quotes I received were all for a Faro Vantage laser tracker. One was a bare-bones configuration—just the tracker, two targets, and a basic software license. The next added a scanning accessory, extra targets, and a rugged carrying case. The third had everything, including a six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) probe kit that alone had a $38,000 price tag.
I stared at the three quotes for two days, trying to figure out why anyone would pay $54,000 more for “the same product.”
Then the cloud of confusion cleared enough for a worse realization: I wasn’t even sure whether a laser tracker was the right tool. I knew Faro made laser trackers. I also knew Faro made portable CMM arms—I’d seen a demo at an IMTS show years earlier, where a salesperson measured a wheel hub and told me the arm was accurate to about the width of a hair. What I didn’t know was which one we actually needed.
In my head, “laser tracker” and “Faro CMM” had blurred into the same category: portable measurement gear made by the same company. So I’d treated the choice as irrelevant and focused on price.
Classic beginner mistake, right? Except I wasn’t a beginner. I was a grown adult with eight years of manufacturing experience who’d somehow convinced himself that picking industrial measurement equipment was about comparing line items on a spreadsheet.
I’m embarrassed to admit this. But maybe that’s why this story is worth telling.
The Question That Changed the Conversation
The turning point happened on a conference call. I’d finally admitted to the distributor that I was confused about the product lines. She said, “Let me get our applications engineer on the line. He’ll help sort this out.”
That call lasted 35 minutes, and the engineer asked me three questions I wasn’t ready for:
- What’s the longest part you’ll measure?
- What tolerance do you need to prove to the customer?
- Where will the system live—a temperature-controlled inspection lab, or the production floor?
I gave him honest answers. Longest part: 6 meters. Tolerances: ±0.05 mm at critical interfaces. Environment: a shop floor that wasn’t climate-controlled, with a ceiling fan in one corner that would absolutely be blowing dust and air currents during measurements.
There was a pause. Then he said, “The Vantage S6 is a great laser tracker. But you don’t need it.”
Your parts are 6 meters. The Vantage is built for large-scale dynamic measurements—20-meter work, 6-DOF setups. What you described is textbook portable CMM arm territory. The arm is cheaper, your operators already understand touch probing, and it handles that tolerance range without the setup cost of a tracker.
Wait, really?
“Really,” he said. “And if your future programs move past 15 meters or need extended 6-DOF measurement, call us back. But for what you just described, a Faro CMM arm with a laser line probe will do the job at a fraction of the price.”
So glad I made that call. If I’d kept working through the quote spreadsheet, I would have told my manager we needed to spend $152,000 on a system that was twice as much machine as our parts required. (Should mention: FARO’s own product pages draw the same line—the Vantage series is positioned for large-scale metrology, while the FaroArm line is built for shop-floor inspection. The info was public all along. I just didn’t bother to read it.)
The Same Lesson, Repeated Three Times
You’d think one near-miss on a six-figure purchase would have knocked the lesson into me. It didn’t. The same month, I found three more ways to overstep my expertise.
First, the electrical side of the project. Our senior electrical engineer mentioned they were borrowing a lab scope from another site, and the signal readings were noisy. I saw an opportunity, Googled “automotive oscilloscope” for an afternoon, and presented a recommendation: a four-channel, 200 MHz bench scope at about $6,000. I expected gratitude.
“Which current clamp did you spec?” he asked.
“What’s a current clamp?”
He bought a $1,400 handheld scope that did exactly what the team needed. They’d been using the same model at our sister plant for years. The only thing my research accomplished was two wasted weeks and a meeting everyone politely pretended wasn’t painful.
Second, the quality lab. I’d been reading microscope news, of all things—a newsletter about digital microscopy—and started thinking we needed a $45,000 digital microscope to document weld surfaces. Our QC lead, with the patience of a saint, explained that a microscope shows shape but not roughness. The $2,200 profilometer they’d already selected was the right tool for the job. “Let the lab spec the lab equipment, Dave.”
Third, the strangest one. Our shipping department used a Rice Lake weighing scale, and we needed to connect it to the ERP system. In a meeting, someone asked, “What is Rice Lake weighing systems programming language, anyway?” Everyone looked at me—the person who had apparently become the unofficial “measurement guy”—and I realized I’d been given a halo I didn’t deserve.
I didn’t know. I admitted it. We called distributor tech support, got the answer in fifteen minutes (it was a protocol layer question, not a programming language dilemma), and the integrator handled it in a day. But the moment stuck with me: pretending to know is how you become the bottleneck.
What I’d Do Differently (and What We Actually Bought)
Here’s the checklist I’ve used ever since. It’s saved us from at least three bad equipment decisions since this disaster:
Write the measurement task down before calling anyone. Longest part, tightest tolerance, environment, operator skill level. That two-hour document ended up being the most important thing in the entire acquisition.
Ask for consultation before the quote. Any vendor that prices your order without asking a single question about your application is not selling you fit-for-purpose equipment.
Ask what’s included in the quoted price. The “cheap” quote didn’t include the rugged case, training, or calibration artifacts. The expensive one included 6-DOF hardware we couldn’t use in year one. The system we actually bought—a Faro CMM arm with a laser line probe and a two-year service plan—came to about $87,000. That’s a far cry from $152,000, and it still handles our current workload.
Plan for recurring costs. Calibration and training aren’t optional expenses for inspection equipment. Our first-year calibration and training ran about 7% of the purchase price. If that’s not in your budget, you haven’t finished planning the purchase.
Know the limits of your own expertise. This gets into territory I didn’t fully understand at the time—and to be honest, I’m still no metrology specialist. What I learned is that being a good equipment buyer isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about getting the right people in the room.
The Honest Takeaway
I still can’t tell you the difference between every laser tracker configuration Faro offers. And that’s okay. I can tell you that the $152,000 quote was for a system that would have done more than we needed, at a higher cost, with a longer learning curve. And the $87,000 arm was the right answer for 6-meter parts on an unheated shop floor.
This approach worked for us, but I should add the obvious caveat: if your parts are 20 meters long, or your tolerances are in the single-digit-micron range, the calculus is completely different. Talk to an applications engineer—a specialist, not a generalist rep. At least, that’s been my experience with Faro’s team.
The vendors who tell you “you don’t need our more expensive product” earn customers for life. The vendors who tell you what you want to hear? I don’t use them anymore.
The most expensive phrase in industrial purchasing is “I think I know.” The cheapest one is “can you explain why?”
Pricing referenced from quotes received March–June 2023, including options, service plans, and training. Faro configurations and pricing change over time; verify current details at faro.com or through an authorized distributor.
Leave a Reply