Hackszine.com: Milk plastic

Milk plastic

Casein, a protein found in milk, can be easily precipitated from standard moo juice with vinegar and turned into a malleable homemade plastic. Coffeebot wrote an Instructable that shows you how:

The final product is quite rigid when it's thick (1/8 inch or thicker), moderately pliable when it's a little thinner, and brittle if it's paper thin. It's also sandable and paintable.

I guess casein-based plastics used to be all the rage for buttons, jewelry and pens at the beginning of the 20th century.

Homemade Plastic From Milk [via MAKE]

Posted by Jason Striegel | Jun 13, 2008 09:05 PM
Food, Life | Permalink | Comments (3)

Comments

Newest comments listed first.

Posted by: Anonymouse on June 14, 2008 at 2:10 AM

organic plastic

According to a few things I've read, casein plastic will eventually decompose unless treated with formaldehyde or something similar because it's basically just a concentrated clump of dairy protein. You're basically just making really hard cheese here.

Posted by: Francesco on June 15, 2008 at 12:51 PM

Plastic or Cheese?

Plastic from Milk? I've always called it "Ricotta cheese" and not "plastic"... :-)))

I'm serious: if you put vinegar into hot milk you will get a soft cheese called Ricotta in Italy.

BTW, if you put vinegar into hot soy milk you will get Tofu (not as good as Ricotta)....

Posted by: Francesco on June 15, 2008 at 12:53 PM

Plastic or cheese?

Plastic from Milk? I've always called it "Ricotta cheese" and not "plastic"... :-)))

I'm serious: if you put vinegar into hot milk you will get a soft cheese called Ricotta in Italy.

BTW, if you put vinegar into hot soy milk you will get Tofu (not as good as Ricotta)....