Nike Flyprint is the first 3D-printed textile upper in performance footwear. What it is not is a solution for footwear tooling, though that is something Nike has a long history with (examples can be found here, here and here).

At its most basic level, Nike Flyprint uppers are produced through solid deposit modeling (SDM), a process whereby a TPU filament is unwound from a coil, melted and laid down in layers.

However, it is antithetical to Nike to go a basic route. Instead, the Flyprint method allows designers to translate athlete data into new textile geometries. In this, it advances Nike’s efforts in digitally enabled textile development and adds to a legacy of proprietary modification (or hacking) of machines — a heritage that includes Nike Hyperfuse, Flywire and Flyknit — to achieve previously unimaginable performance solutions.