“The possibility of using ancient Egyptian paste in ceramic 3D printing”

The Egyptians invented the ancient Egyptian paste about 7000 years ago and it was the first self-glazed ceramic body in history, how we can link advanced technology like additive manufacturing with ancient Egyptian paste to get ceramic 3D printing self-glazed body in one fire.
The ancient Egyptian paste is considered a self-glazed body with a very low content of clays so it is hard to be formed, in ancient civilization it was used to make small ornaments and sculptures by pressing in moulds (hippo, beetle, ….etc ), and as a self-glazed ceramic body, the ancient paste contains a high content of silica and soluble alkaline salts of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate and potassium carbonate, that migrates to the surface during drying, forming a fine white powder. This scum melts during firing to form a vitreous surface and a highly glassy substructure of the body. The colouring metal oxides mixed with the body composition to make rich colours with different shades like blue, turquoise and green. In addition to that, the ancient Egyptian paste considered as high strength body, although it is fired at low temperatures around 850 to 950 Celsius degrees, depending on the body composition in an oxidizing atmosphere.
Ceramic applications and modelling methods have varied for centuries, from aesthetic purposes to today's advanced ceramic technology (high strength, hardness, thermal shock and resistance to corrosion). New technologies such as Additive manufacturing were used to produce high-quality products with geometrically complex designs and precise dimensions that cannot be achieved by traditional modelling methods. In the ceramic 3D printing process (layer-by-layer construction) the design can totally controlled by shaping the material. Therefore, the additive manufacturing approach opened the door to new applications for forming materials that did not exist before in the ceramic field.
Advanced technologies like additive manufacturing concentrate on how to make prototypes from different materials through a variety of 3D printing techniques, Current researches in this field focus on how to use new materials through 3D printing, and this research develops the possibility of using ancient Egyptian paste bodies in one of the additive manufacturing techniques, as examines a proposed body composition of Egyptian paste and the possibilities of forming it by ceramic 3D printing due to the difficulty of forming in traditional ways. This enables potters and designers to create and print 3D ceramic models of ancient Egyptian self-glazed bodies from once fire.