A CCD camera calibration technology based on the translation of a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) is proposed to decrease the calibrating cost of CCD cameras and to improve the calibrating accuracy, and its principle, mathematic model, calibrating steps and calibrating accuracy are studied.According to the CCD camera calibration principle and the high translation accuracy of CMM, the CMM brings the CCD camera to be calibrated to produce the relative translation with respect to the center of a white ceramic standard sphere (the calibration characteristic point)along the X, Y, Z axes,then the coordinates of the different positions of the calibration characteristic point in the probe coordinate system can be obtained.Furthermore,by capturing the image of the white ceramic standard sphere by the camera at every position, the coordinates of different positions of the calibration characteristic points in a computer frame coordinate system can be registered after image processing.By introducing the probe coordinate system, a calibration mathematic model is established, the calibration steps are given and a calibration system is set up.The comparing calibration result shows that precision of the CCD camera calibration system based on the translation of CMM is equivalent to that of the special calibration system , and the difference between the calibrating data of the two systems is within ±1 μm, which meets the requirements of the practical calibration for low costs,higher accuracy and higher calibration efficiency.