Today was the day I fired up the injection molding machine for the first time. Literally, "fired up". It worked like a charm the first few minutes, but then in an instant it smoldered nasty white smoke all over the apartment. Thank god for emergency stop buttons.

After some guessing, I found out a few errors to fix. First I need to adjust the PID thermocontrollers to have a slower cycling of the heaters, plus relocate the thermocouplers ("sensors") closer to the actual heaters for a faster response.

The main fault was that one thermocoupler was mounted directly to the nozzle block, which because of its size and mass heats up a lot slower than the actual barrel inside the heater element. Therefore the plastic closest to the heater probably goes up to over 250 degrees celsius (500 fahrenheit) before the nozzle even have reached 150. 

Some insulation around the nozzle is also probably a good idea. 

Plus, next time I will definitely bring the whole setup outside =)