In injection moulding or in extrusion, plastication is the step during which polymer pellets
are melted by the means of mechanical dissipation provided by a rotating screw and by thermal
conduction coming from a heated metallic barrel. This step is crucial for melt thermal homogeneity,
charge dispersion and fibre length preservation. Although there have been a large number of
theoretical and experimental studies of plastication during the past decades, mostly on extrusion
and mostly using the screw extraction technique, extremely few of them have dealt with trying to
visualise plastication, let alone measuring the plastication profile in real-time. As a matter of fact,
designing such an equipment is an arduous task. We designed an industry-sized metallic barrel,
featuring 3 optical glass windows; each window possessing 3 plane faces itself to allow for
visualisation and record by synchronised cameras. The images recorded can
be further analysed by digital image processing. Preliminary results confirm the plastication theory
and show a compacted solid bed and a melt pool side by side. The total plastication length is a
direct function of screw rotation frequency as it is obvious from results on the melt pool width,
which increases when the screw rotation frequency decreases. However, some evidence of solid bed
breakage has been recorded, whereby the solid bed does not diminish continuously along the screw
but is fractured in the compression zone.