In the last years, due to the growth of sectors such as aeronautics, energy generation, etc., there is an increasing need for manufacturing of large parts. This leads to new issues with the manufacturing systems, driving to the development of new machine concepts. Besides, the efficient and effective verification of these large parts is also a key problematic question. One important issue to solve by the machine operators is the initial location of the raw part. Raw parts are produced by inaccurate processes like casting or welding, and they don’t have reliable surfaces or features that ease the process of initial positioning. Initial alignment of the part at the machine is a critical process, as the excess material of the raw part (overs- tock) with respect to the final part must be distributed at all the surfaces to be machined. If the part is located so that there is too much excess material at one surface, it is quite possible that there will be shortage of material at the opposite site, and therefore the part will be spoiled. Cost of spoiling can be very high, not only because of the cost of the raw part, but also because of cost of the machining process performed so far. Due to the high loss (money, energy, and time) associated to the rejection of a part, initial alignment is done by long time-consuming processes. There are different approaches for that setting, all of them having a certain part of the pro- cess being performed on the machine itself. This process is labour intensive, usually performed in a nonrepetitive way (part specific process), with high risk of error. Smaller parts are usually verified by using Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMM) when a tight measurement uncertainty is required. However, for these large parts, a large scale CMM is seldom available. Besides, taking the part out of the machine tool, preparing it at the CMM and correc- ting the possible errors back in the machine tool is a very time-consuming process. Optical measurement systems such as laser trackers are an alternative in this case. However, the resulting uncertainty, the cost of the system, the measure- ment time and the accessibility to the part are still an issue. MEASUREMENT 20 Initial alignment of the part at the machine is a critical process VSET: fast raw part alignment IDEKO Precision Engineering Researcher Ibai Leicea,