The importance of having an adequate surface roughness on sugar mill rolls cannot be over-emphasised. Both mill extraction performance and feeding potential will suffer if the surface roughness drops below a particular threshold. Although this threshold is poorly defined, mill engineers in Australia fear the consequences of poor roughness. The Australian raw sugar industry spends about $2M per annum on roll roughening with approximately 75% of this cost due to labour. Any approach that improves the productivity of roll roughening in a cost effective manner is therefore desirable. At present there is no widely accepted automated system for roll roughening. Mills rely almost totally on manual method (mostly with stick electrodes) to roughen rolls. Many mills have indicated that they see potential labour savings with an automated roll arcing machine.