I long to extrude my own pasta! (Well, not really, but for a fiver I’d give it a go!) I spotted this handheld pasta maker in a charity shop in Norwich, while I was in the shopping mall that contains the Retro Replay arcade.
The interesting thing in these is that you have a strong and relatively cheap linear actuator that could be used for some of your short-throw actuation needs! I have never seen something so small and convenient that you could actually buy and mess around with. Any ideas on what else we could try extruding? Please let me know.