Plastics Production Machine Operator
What the work is
Operates extruding, cable making, compounding, reclamation, injection moulding and blow moulding machines to produce finished plastic products.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Sets up and prepares machines ready for plastics production
- Sets injection moulding parameters to machinery, and places and aligns robots to prepare for robotic processes
- Operates controls to regulate temperature, pressure, speed and flow of plastics operation
- Measures and loads raw plastic materials, items and ingredients for mixing into machines and feeding mechanisms
- Threads uncoated wire and cable through plastic coating machines, around take-up reels, and through dies and cooling chambers
- Performs routine quality checks on products, such as dimensional checks, clarity of colour, and impact resistance
- Examines output for defects and conformity to specifications
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a plastics factory with moulding machines, a composites bay for boat parts and a small rubber line. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A mould opens and a perfect part drops out, again and again, exactly to size
- A colour change goes smoothly and the first parts off the line need no tweaking
- You fix a problem before the quality team even knew it was there
Hard days
- Parts with tiny flaws that appear out of nowhere in the middle of a big run
- Fumes, noise and hot machinery that make long shifts tiring
- A colleague who wants to hurry a changeover that you know needs more care
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 731332, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.