How Eliud Kipchoge Helped Perfect Nike’s 3D Printing Process For Uppers
BEAVERTON, Ore.— April 18, 2018 — In September of 2017 in Berlin,
Eliud Kipchoge, who ran the fastest marathon ever, battled heavy rain
and 99-percent humidity over the course of 26.2 miles and managed to
come out with a first-place finish. Though seriously inspiring, his
performance wasn’t enough to earn the world record he was hoping for.
After Nike designers spoke with Kipchoge about the impact those wet
conditions had on his performance, they learned his shoes (the Nike Zoom
Vaporfly Elite he first made famous during Nike’s Breaking 2 attempt)
absorbed water. And that water wasn’t able to evaporate, so it added
weight. This was obviously something both the designers and Kipchoge
didn’t want to happen in future races.
Considering Kipchoge felt the shoe was otherwise “perfect … really
perfect,” and the fact that the Nike Vaporfly Elite and Nike Vaporfly 4%
became the most dominant shoes on the 2017 marathon circuit, designers
decided to maintain the tooling and focus on developing a solution in
the form of an updated upper. The designers revisited a new application
of a performance-printed 3D upper they’d been experimenting with. They
coined it Nike Flyprint and showed it to Kipchoge.
The process of solving expressly for Kipchoge’s needs began in
earnest in early 2018. Designers kicked off a rapid-fire prototyping
phase (where they went through thousands of upper possibilities before
hitting “print” on several variations for each prototype and selected
version “D” for trial). Kipchoge’s response to the first running in that
shoe.
Friday, 20 April 2018