The F.N. Smith Guide to Custom Machining: Conveyor and Roll Manufacturing

Modern manufacturing depends on precision-engineered conveyors and roll systems – across multiple industries – from food production and packaging, to pet food and more. As expectations rise across product efficiency and hygiene, leading manufacturers partner with those who provide custom machinery that eliminates downtime, improves consistency, and maximizes ROI.

Engineers and maintenance teams opting for custom machinery solutions across conveyors are benefitting from higher efficiency and throughput, better quality, consistency, and much more. Those who fail to integrate the correct machinery solutions that solve the client’s unique needs face increased downtime, waste, and rising manufacturing costs.

This page examines the challenges and realities engineers and maintenance personnel face, including unplanned machinery downtime, the high costs of sourcing spare and emergency parts, and budget constraints. The goal of the page is to support clients in understanding upcoming market trends and prioritizing their efforts accordingly to benefit their production lines.

What Is Custom Machinery?

Custom machinery refers to equipment specifically designed to meet a client’s niche needs. Each aspect of custom machinery is designed and built to integrate seamlessly into the existing product line, processes, and support production goals.

Clients choose F.N. Smith’s custom machinery to enhance production processes, improve efficiency, and reduce operating costs. Food production customers and packaging industries continue to choose custom solutions to address unique manufacturing challenges that off-the-shelf equipment cannot solve.

The Industries We Continue To Support

Over the last 30 years, F.N. Smith has been solving machinery challenges for the following industries:

Food & Beverage: As one of the leading food processing machinery manufacturers, we offer a range of solutions that suit your needs. Our food-grade conveyor solutions help you process food items such as meat, dairy, bakery, beverage, and fruit or vegetable items quickly, safely, and efficiently.

Pet Food: We support the pet food industry by designing and manufacturing custom processing and packaging equipment used by many of the largest pet food producers, especially in dog food applications.

Agriculture: We design and support the agriculture industry with custom processing and handling equipment for grain and oat processing, particularly solutions such as grain hullers, roller mills, and related machinery for milling operations.

Consumer Goods: We support consumer goods by providing custom-built production and packaging machinery that improves throughput, quality, and efficiency on consumer manufacturing lines.

Other industries: At F.N. Smith, we are open to supporting and supplying solutions to a variety of industries. Previously, we have provided custom solutions for industries such as automotive, aggregates, and mining.

Why Is Custom Machinery Important?

Each aspect of custom machinery is crucial to creating an integrated and efficient high-volume production line, as the specific machinery has been designed for tasks that are unique to the client’s needs. Custom machinery helps manufacturing operators boost productivity, accuracy, and efficiency by automating processes and seamlessly integrating with pre-existing production lines.

The benefits of incorporating custom machinery into existing production lines:

Higher Efficiency & Throughput

Integrating custom machinery into your existing production line boosts efficiency and throughput, directly improving profitability, capacity, and resource use.

Considered design and engineering support minimizes downtime for maintenance, repairs, and changeovers, e.g., making change parts and adjustments quicker and easier. The shorter changeover and maintenance windows allow for increased production time across shifts, directly increasing overall output from the same line.

Better Quality & Consistency

Quality and product consistency remain crucial across manufacturing. Custom solutions that support quality and consistency are designed in stainless steel, including tight tolerances and one-off designs that allow minimal variation and wear, stabilizing product quality over time.

Manufacturing techniques and continuous engineering analysis are used to refine designs, extend tool life, and keep machines performing consistently across long production cycles.

Custom solutions that incorporate automated inspection systems and sensors can detect imperfections and variations in real-time, ensuring that quality standards are maintained throughout the production line.

Compliance & Cleaning

For those working in the food and pet food industry, custom machinery is designed with materials and layouts that are suitable for all sanitary environments in regulated industries. This includes food‑grade conveyor designs that support safe handling of meat, dairy, bakery, beverage, and pet food products in line with current hygiene regulations. Custom machinery for the specific sector is designed in stainless steel for hygienic purposes, including clean-in-place (CIP) systems, and compliance materials that reduce the risks of bacterial growth and cross-contamination.

Integration

Supporting integration, custom machinery is engineered to fit into existing lines, controls, and automation rather than forcing a standalone, “island” machine approach.​

Engineers build custom machine solutions to fit existing line configurations, ensuring that new equipment can be easily integrated into upstream and downstream processes without major re-layout. These line-fits help to reduce disruption, allowing processors to upgrade a single step while keeping the rest of the line intact.

Productivity & Cost-Advantages

Custom machinery supports a boost in clients’ profitability by maximizing output while minimizing labor, material, and operational expenses.

Engineered around each customer’s process, custom solutions minimize bottlenecks, cut changeover and maintenance time, boosting usable production hours. This extra uptime and smoother flow directly affects the amount of product units produced from the same building, utilities, and headcount, improving overall productivity.

Plus, the precise machining, tight tolerances, and component redesigns are based on proven technologies that extend tooling life and reduce unplanned breakdowns, lowering maintenance and spare-parts costs over time. Configurations that reduce packaging material, material handling steps, and required storage space also cut ongoing costs, such as packaging speed, indirect labor, and warehouse footprint.

Flexibility & Competitiveness

Custom machinery that is both flexible and competitive enables manufacturers to adapt quickly while keeping costs under control and maintaining healthy margins.

Custom solutions are engineered one-on-one with clients to match exact production needs, such as integrating into existing line configurations or incorporating features like robotic integration and HMI controls for versatile operation across product types. This avoids one-size-fits-all limitations, allowing processors to handle varied formats, such as different pet foods or grains, while maintaining high performance.

By optimizing floor space, reducing material handling, and boosting uptime through proven technologies, custom equipment supports manufacturers in increasing yields and efficiency, positioning them ahead in speed-to-market and cost control. End-to-end support from concept to training ensures seamless adaptation, enhancing long-term agility in competitive sectors such as food and pet food.

Engineers and maintenance personnel face multiple custom machinery challenges that need to be taken into consideration when it comes to enhancing their operations, such as efficiency and productivity. Challenges across roll and conveyor manufacturers include sustainability, customization, automation pressure, and more.

The Challenges Faced By Engineers

Addressing Durability & Ease
Custom solutions leveraging an expert team of engineers and modern technology, including advanced measurement devices, to provide customized solutions that adapt to specific project requirements, ensuring a fit for unique applications in sectors such as food and beverage and oil and gas.

Addressing Access To Spare Parts
Engineers have access to spare parts through vendor-agnostic stocking and global distribution networks.

Addressing Hygienic & Sustainable Solutions
Sustainability is addressed through hygienic, efficient custom machinery designs that reduce waste, improve cleanability, and maximize production value from raw materials, particularly in food and pet food applications.

Designing custom conveyors and machinery that fit specific processes and layouts means that clients avoid under- or oversized generic equipment that can waste energy or floor space. From concept to installation and training support, custom machinery keeps equipment running efficiently over a long period, which indirectly reduces the environmental footprint.

Hygienic, sanitary construction reduces contamination risks in food-grade applications, while robust builds proven over 10+ years handle high speeds up to 400 cpm reliably.

The Challenges Faced By Maintenance

Addressing Downtime
Custom machinery prioritizes reliability and safety through robust, user-friendly designs, comprehensive lifecycle support, and integrated safety features specifically designed for food, pet food, and processing environments.

Easier maintenance access, faster changeovers, shorter lead times for repair parts, and reverse engineering for unavailable drawings are all backed by field installation and training to sustain high uptime and yields.

For safety, custom machinery incorporates light screen safety systems, HMI-controlled functions for intuitive operation, and robotic integration that fits into pre-existing lines without compromising worker access or process flow.

Addressing Regulatory Compliance
Selecting components and system architectures addresses regulatory compliance concerns, as systems match frameworks that align equipment with legal requirements in selected markets.

Addressing Cost & Supply Chain
Focusing on value-added engineering, life-cycle services, and flexible engagement models, custom machinery addresses cost, supply-chain, and capacity issues. The overall goal is to create custom machinery that boosts the bottom line by reducing costs and increasing productivity through automation.

Several trends are reshaping how custom machinery operates. Understanding these complexities helps manufacturers prepare for changes ahead.

Standard Machinery

Automation and robotics are expected to remain a significant trend in the custom machinery market. The custom automation equipment market is forecasted to grow roughly 8-9% CAGR to around 110-115 billion by the early 2030s [Persistence Markets Research]. This reflects the widespread adoption of robotics.

F.N. Smith provides further automated solutions across Roll & Conveyors:

• Centralized HMI systems mean that operators can manage complex automated systems through a user-friendly interface.

Choosing automation that fits current needs while allowing growth is a key consideration.

Q: How does automation with robotics improve safety and productivity in custom manufacturing?

A: Automation via robotics minimizes risks to labor in the workplace, reducing human error and workplace injuries. It also boosts productivity with shorter cycle times.

Hygiene & Sanitation

Easy-to-clean food processing equipment is estimated to grow at about USD 56 – 57 billion in 2025 [Future Market Insights].

F.N. Smith provides hygienic and sanitized solutions across Roll & Conveyors:

• Clean-in-place (CIP) systems
• Positive drive technology
• Stainless steel construction
• Secondary operations integration (e.g., flip, seal, label)

Integrating hygienic and sanitized custom machinery into your pre-existing production lines enables a safer and cleaner environment for multiple industries, such as pet and food manufacturing.

Q: How does hygienic design support cleaning in custom machinery?

A: Features such as clean-in-place (CIP) systems, drainable slopes, and stainless steel construction minimize manual cleaning time and water use, eliminating residue traps, therefore directly reducing microbial risks and bacteria growth, ultimately reducing downtime.

Q: What hygienic standards does custom machinery need to meet?

A: Each machine is built to specification, with hygienic considerations defined by the customer’s process, product, and production requirements, ensuring the final solution is fit for purpose and aligned with how the equipment will be used in practice.

Sustainability & Waste Reduction

According to Intel Market Research, the light conveyor belt markets grew from $3.94 billion in 2024 to $5.68 billion by 2032, driven by sustainable innovations like antimicrobial coatings and CIP systems. Food-grade systems reach $282 million by 2031 at 3.9% CAGR, prioritizing hygiene and low-waste designs.

F.N. Smith provides sustainable and waste reduction solutions across Roll & Conveyors:

• Positive drive technology and cantilever design
• Clean-in-place (CIP) systems

Choosing F.N. Smith custom machinery solutions supports your processes in lowering waste and meeting sustainability goals.

Smart Control

Across custom machinery, smart controls support precision tasks such as adaptive machining, robot coordination, and fleet-wide monitoring, reducing rework by up to 20-30% in construction-adjacent custom builds, whilst improving yields in factory automation [Consegic Business Intelligence].

F.N. Smith provides smart control solutions across Roll & Conveyors:

• Centralized HMI systems
• Auto tracking and positive drive technology
• Integrated process control

Smart control features in F.N. Smith solutions provide adaptive machinery and improve yields across manufacturing sectors.

Personalization & Modularity

Statistics by Research and Markets suggest that “the broader custom manufacturing market is projected to grow from about 778 billion USD in 2025 to around 1.36 trillion USD by 2032, implying roughly 8.3% CAGR, which underpins continued demand for custom-built machinery and engineered‑to‑order lines.”

F.N. Smith provides personalization and modularity across Roll & Conveyors:

• Concept to installation design
• Bolt-on secondary designs
• Positive drive tech with auto tracking
• HMI-controlled functions

Personalization and modularity features from F.N. Smith provide ease-of-use for mechanics and reduce the machinery floor space.

“We have been working with F.N. Smith for many years on many different aspects of our manufacturing business. Over that time, they have delivered multiple high-quality pieces of equipment and custom machine parts that have improved our operation and reduced our operating costs. Their expertise and willingness to work toward the right solution has made F.N. Smith one of the most value-added vendors we have.”

– Fortune 500 manufacturer

With our ‘Total Commitment’ philosophy, at F.N. Smith, we emphasize one-on-one engineering, the use of skilled tradespeople, and adaptable manufacturing processes. Our expert engineers work closely with clients from initial discussions to the completion of a project to ensure the final product matches exact specifications.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software manage projects from customer requirements through to delivery. These systems coordinate the various stages of design, fabrication, and installation, which is vital for maintaining control over complex, non-standard projects.

Enhancing efficiency by leveraging technology to optimize production processes, F.N. Smith incorporates automation and robotics into its manufacturing processes to improve precision and increase output, ultimately meeting and improving efficiency.

By manufacturing high-quality, durable equipment, we ensure reliable and consistent operation in customers’ facilities, which minimizes the likelihood of equipment failures and associated safety risks.
Plus, in relation to the food and beverage industry, F.N.Smith innovations are designed to meet stringent regulatory standards.

We tie our sustainability efforts to resource optimization, waste reduction, and energy efficiency. We develop and utilize energy-efficient and eco-friendly machinery, which helps customers minimize their environmental impact and reduce energy consumption.

Integrating advanced, scalable, adaptable technologies into the design and manufacturing process, this approach ensures that custom machinery can meet evolving industry demands, incorporating new technologies. F.N. Smith incorporates cutting-edge technology, such as advanced robotics and potentially AI and ML applications, into its systems to automate tasks, improve efficiency, and enhance quality.

The custom machinery industry continues to evolve. Sustainability and regulatory standards highlight an evolving manufacturing environment rather than temporary issues. Manufacturers that are adapting their production lines with custom machinery are benefiting from efficient processes, product consistency, and improved productivity.

Those failing to adapt face ongoing struggles with workforce issues and meeting sustainability demands.
Your manufacturing problems end where our engineering starts. Begin addressing manufacturing challenges with F.N. Smith. Learn what others have done.

We’re leaders in the manufacturing space with a focus on special machinery. We design and develop our equipment in Oregon, Illinois, and export it worldwide. F.N. Smith has a proven record of delivering custom machinery solutions that improve customers’ productivity, flexibility, and maintain regulatory compliance.

For more information on custom machinery solutions, visit the custom machinery and fabrication solutions page.

Or explore our entire range of custom conveyors and food machinery.