DIY injection moulding machine

A home-made injection mould, for moulding a plastic head onto an M6 screw

Here's an injection moulding machine I made several years ago, under the square shaped cover with the label on the front is the heating chamber. Heat is from an electric element surrounding the steel nozzle. Plastic is fed into the chamber, & subsequently into the mould by a rack & pinion, in fact its the steering rack from an old mini! The raw material for this is polythene or polypropylene sheet (waste plastic containers). The idea behind it was to de-mystify the recycling process as well as demonstrating how one of the most common ways of making plastic items works.