SMR stands for spherically mounted retroreflector — a retroreflector built inside a precision ball. That is the industry name for the small sphere that sits on top of your FieldPrinter. Everywhere in the Dusty app and this Help Center, the same part is simply called the reflector.
What each half of the name means
| Half of the name | What it means |
|---|---|
| Retroreflector | It sends the laser beam back along the path it arrived on, from a wide range of directions — not just straight-on. Inside the ball, mirrored surfaces meeting at right angles do that work. |
| Spherically mounted | Those optics are held at the exact center of a machined ball. Because a sphere looks the same from every direction, the tracker reads the same center point no matter how the ball is rotated. |