When aligning a vertical flange-mounted machine, it can be helpful to tweak the flange configuration in your laser alignment system to take advantage of different shimming alternatives. For instance, if the OD of the flange is larger than the diameter of the mounting bolt circle, a good laser system will compensate for this by taking into consideration that when shimming your pivot point is not the bolt circle but the flange OD. Thus, all shimming corrections will be positive.

However, if you already have shims at all the bolt positions, you could take advantage of the opportunity to minimize the required shimming corrections by forcing the smallest correction position to be zero. Do this by entering a distance for flange OD as being equal to your bolt circle. Of course, the best laser systems already allow for all the different shimming alternatives (positive, negative, and zero-sum options) right in the software, so you don’t have to use this trick.