Butter-making artifacts

Through this activity, your students will learn about emulsions and how a physical change in matter can create butter. This activity can be connected to multiple aspects of the school curriculum.

Have you and your students ever wanted to make butter like they did in the past? In this activity you all will have the opportunity to use a 3D printed butter churn to do just that!

Note: The butter churn should only be used for demonstrational purposes and any butter made from it should not be ingested. Currently there is no way to 3D print an object that is entirely food safe. If you wish to make butter without a churn, see the first “Try this” activity.

Instructions

1. Take the 35% cream out of the fridge and let it reach room temperature.
2. Fill about one third of the container of the butter churn with cream.
3. Put the lid on the container with the dasher (the pole) in the barrel and sticking out of the lid.  To do you this you’ll need to put the dasher in the container first before putting on the lid.
4. Use the dasher to agitate the cream by moving it up and down quickly. This can be a messy process, so it’s best to do it in a sink.
5. At some point the cream will no longer easily move in the barrel and will have a foam-like appearance (this will likely take around 10 minutes). The cream has now formed whipped cream.  Feel free to open the lid to see what this looks like.
6. Keep agitating the whipped cream until a substantial solid begins to separate from the liquid (this will likely take 10 minutes). You have now formed butter! The liquid part is buttermilk.
7. Pour out the buttermilk in a separate container.
8. Use the spatula to scoop out the butter into a bowl. Fill the bowl with cold water. The cold water will harden the butter. Gently knead the butter while it is still in the water to remove any remaining buttermilk
9. Drain the water from the bowl. Now your butter is ready!
   Note: We recommend that you do not ingest any butter. Currently there is no way to 3D print an object that is entirely food safe. If you wish to make butter without a churn, see the “Try this” activity below.
10. Wash the churn with hot soapy water and a brush to remove the butter that may have gotten into the cracks. This is important as butter could get stuck in the cracks of the butter churn and cause bacteria to grow.

Scientific explanation

As you saw in this activity, cream is used to make butter. Cream is obtained from the milk that comes directly from cows. It is mainly a mixture of fat particles and water (the cream used in this activity was 35% fat) along with some other substances like pigments (carotene) and milk solids (protein, lactose). More specifically it is an emulsion of water and fat; an emulsion is a mixture of two things that normally do not mix. One of the main reasons why the fat stays mixed in the water and does not clump together, or float to the surface, is because it is found in tiny membrane sacs. The fat clumps inside these membrane sacs are called “globules”.

During this activity, the agitation in the milk created by the dasher caused many of the membrane sacs to burst. The fat, now free, begins to clump together. As more of the membrane sacs burst, more of the fat clumps together, forming butter. The remaining liquid forms buttermilk.  It is largely water, though some of the fat globules remain.

Instructions

There are two parts to this activity. In Part 1, you and your students can explore how a butter mould was used. In Part 2, you and your students can design your own butter stamp.

For Part 1 we suggest that you use plasticine instead of real butter because currently there is no way to 3D print an object that is entirely food safe.

Part 1: How to use a butter mould

1. Put the plasticine on a flat surface (such as on a cutting board or a table). Try to make it so that the plasticine covers the same area as the butter mould.
2. Lower the butter mould over the plasticine, and press down on the stamp (the plunger part).
3. Lift up the butter mould and press down on the stamp to push the plasticine out. You should have a piece of plasticine in the shape of a bar of butter with a stamp of the logo of the butter company, just like a real piece of butter!

Part 2: Design a butter stamp

Install Sketchup Make

1. Download Sketchup Make here.
2. Install Sketchup Make. If you have any problems, please visit this link for troubleshooting tips.

Make your own butter stamp

There are many ways for you and your students to design and customize a butter stamp. For this activity, we’ll just have you put your name on one that has already been created.

1. Start Sketchup Make. This will take you to the Welcome page, click on “Start using Sketchup” to start the program.
2. Load the Sketchup Make file of the editable butter stamp into the program (Editable butter stamp.smk). Note, if you are using a different program, we’ve provided you with a .stl file that you can use.
3. Familiarize yourself with the program. You can find video tutorials of the program here.
   Some general hints:
   • • Activate the “Large Tool Set” toolbar; this is the toolbar that will have the most useful options for this activity. To do this, go to the “View” menu and click on “Toolbars”. Then make sure “Large Tool Set” is checked. Also, if there are other options selected, click on them to deactivate them. For instance, if you just installed the program, the “Getting Started” toolbar is likely checked.
     • In most cases, to draw something you need to click and then move your mouse. You do not need to hold the mouse button while you move it.
     • To zoom in and out, you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse button. If you cannot do this, you can use the “zoom” button. Click on the “zoom” button, click and hold the left mouse button where you want to zoom and move the mouse up and down.
     • To rotate the camera, click and hold the middle mouse button (usually the scroll wheel) and then move the mouse. If you cannot do this, you can use the “orbit” button. Click on the “orbit” button, click and hold the left mouse button where you want to rotate and move the mouse back and forth.
     • To pan/move your viewpoint, click and hold the middle mouse button (usually the scroll wheel), hold “Shift” and then move your mouse. If you cannot do this, you can use the pan button. Click on the “pan” button, click and hold the left mouse button where you want to start to pan the view and move your mouse back and forth.
     • To select things, click on the “arrow” icon on the toolbar and then click on what you want to select.
4. Rotate the camera so that you are looking at the bottom of the butter stamp.
5. Click on the 3D text button that is found on the toolbar. Click on the bottom of the butter stamp and a new window should appear.
6. Type your name in the box. Set the height to 30 mm. Make sure that, in the “Form” row, both “Filled” and “Extruded” are checked. Set the extruded value to 5 mm.
7. Press “Place”. Now you can move the text to where you want to place it. To place it just click the left mouse button. Before clicking, make sure that it says “On Face” near your cursor; this text will appear once you stop moving the cursor. Also don’t worry if the text isn’t oriented the way that you want it or is too big, we will be addressing this in the following steps.
8. To rotate the text (if needed):
   1. 1. Click on the rotate button. A protractor-like image will now appear when you are in the drawing area. Move the protractor over the text to the point that you want to rotate the text around. As you move over the text, you might see the protractor tool flip between being parallel to the top surface of the text and parallel to the side surface of the text. This is defining your plane of the rotation. Make sure that the protractor is parallel to the top surface of the text. Once you have chosen your rotation point, click on the mouse button (your name should now be outlined in blue).
      2. Now you will need to determine the length of the rotation arm. To do this, move the mouse back and forth to vary its length. A longer rotation arm means that you can rotate over smaller angles, though this is not that important for this activity. Once you have selected your arm length, click the left mouse button.
      3. Now you can rotate your text. Move the mouse back and forth to do this. Click the mouse button once when you are done. Don’t worry if, after rotating the proper angle, the text is not on the butter stamp, we will be moving the text in the next step.
9. Move the text (if needed):
   1. 1. Click on the move tool. Click on your name (it should now be outlined in blue). Now you can move the text anywhere you wish.
      2. Once you have placed the text where you want it, click the mouse button to place the text.
10. Resize the text (if needed):
    1. 1. Click on the scale tool. Click on your name (it should now be outlined in yellow with green boxes surrounding your name).
       2. Click and hold one of the boxes and then move the mouse back and forth to resize your name. We recommend that you use one of the squares found in a corner. When you are done release the mouse button.
11. Flip the text. This is needed so that when the stamp is used, it will make an imprint of your name in the correct orientation. To do this:
    1. 1. If your name is not currently selected, select it using the “arrow” icon.
       2. Right click your name. This should bring up a menu.
       3. Click on “Flip along”, which should bring up another menu. What you choose next will depend on the orientation of your name.  You want to flip along the axis that is running vertically to your name. In the case below, you will be flipping along the red axis, so you would select “Component’s Red”.
12. Your personalised butter stamp is done! Print it off and then use it in the butter mould with butter or plasticine.

Ingenium has more than 150,000 objects in its collection, including many ones related to butter stamps and moulds. You can explore other objects in the collection below.

Artifact details

Butter churn, circa 1900

Manufacturer: Unknown

Artifact no. 1987.0363.001

The butter churn pictured above is the familiar “dasher churn” in which the dasher (a plunger with an x-shaped attachment) was moved up and down to churn cream into butter. In this particular churn, the dasher was made out of wood. The barrel is ceramic with a pinkish-gray glaze.

A butter mould is a tool used to form butter into shapes, while a butter stamp is used to mark the butter with a design. In many instances they were combined in the same device. Butter moulds and stamps were introduced to North America by European settlers who brought the tools and techniques from their homelands. Butter moulds were particularly useful for marketing butter as it allowed producers to form a quantity of butter with a desired weight, while the stamp could be used to identify the butter maker. The stamps were also decorative, with symbols and designs reflecting particular regions.

Moulds and stamps were initially carved by hand from wood, often by the farmer who made the butter. Production eventually moved to factories that could quickly produce moulds and stamps in larger quantities. Butter moulds and stamps were popular from the mid-1700s until the early 1900s, but gradually fell out of use as butter became mass-produced in facilities called creameries.

Many artifacts related to butter moulds and stamps can be found in the Ingenium collection, below.

Artifact details

Butter mould, circa 1890

Manufacturer: Unknown

Artifact no. 1987.0387.001

People used butter moulds, like the one pictured above, to shape butter into rectangular blocks, and imprint them with designs. This particular mould is Canadian-made from maple wood and metal fittings. The design on the stamp consists of the letters SRL (possibly the initials of the butter maker) with stars on both sides surrounded by vertical and horizontal lines.