This paper presents the melt spinning and characterisation of polymer actuator fibres; fibres that contract along the fibre axis in response to heat. Recently, Haines et al (1) showed that low-cost filaments available as e.g. fishing line can be relevant precursors for artificial muscles. They demonstrated a reversible fibre-direction thermal contraction, which was significantly amplified when the fibres were twisted and coiled. The effect prevailed for over a million cycles, and was due to an increase in the conformational entropy of the amorphous phase. This seemingly simple method provides an interesting complement to the use of polymers with shape memory (SM) properties. These are typically block copolymers, consisting of “hard” and “soft” segments. Their actuation at a certain temperature is due to the glass transition or crystalline melting in the soft segments. (2) We have melt spun fibres from poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and a thermoplastic polyurethane (PUR), and carried out subsequent twisting and coiling of the fibres. The PVDF was Solef 1006, 1008 and 1010 kindly provided by Solvay (Milan, Italy), and the PUR was Tecoflex 72D, kindly provided by Lubrizol (Wickliffe, OH). Tecoflex is known to have good SM properties; SM polymers are rarely studied in their highly oriented state. The actuating properties of our fibres – recovery stress, reversible strain, cycle rate and cycle life – are currently under evaluation in our lab, and will be analysed with respect to the differences in molecular weight (MW), degree of crystallinity and degree of orientation along the spin-line axis. The proposed application for our fibres is as actuators in a soft exo-skeleton garment. REFERENCES 1. C. S. Haines et al., Artificial Muscles from Fishing Line and Sewing Thread. Science 343, 868-872 (2014). 2. I. A. Rousseau, Challenges of shape memory polymers: A review of the progress toward overcoming SMP's limitations. Polymer Engineering & Science 48, 2075-2089 (2008).