- Jul 23, 2005
- 3,166
- 744
Why Can't Nike Just Make the Air Units Bigger?
- Thread in 'Nike Retro' Thread starter Started by nycz illest,
- Start date
- Dec 23, 2004
- 48
- 10
Thanks MrKrispy1183 for the info. very educational.
- Mar 28, 2006
- 3,088
- 185
#1 its cheaper. #2 years ago, we all turned in claim forms saying out bubbles popped .
- Apr 4, 2003
- 4,186
- 2,805
this post pops up allllll the time, the new air units are definitely LESS comfortable, if I have to post up comparison pics again drop me a message between 05am90's and the euro release.
- Feb 19, 2006
- 291
- 10
Very good article. Thanks guys.
- Jan 9, 2008
- 75
- 10
If anyone's still reading this thread (and as trethousandgt said, this comes up all the time): This change is/was not about the $$$. If you haven't read the BusinessWeek article, read it thoroughly, then readit again. Then hang on as I geek out and drop some science in a long post.
The whole idea behind "Air" cushioning, as invented by Frank Rudy (the inventor who shopped his idea around to a load of shoecompanies--including Adi--before finding a willing partner in Nike) was to create a durable cushioning system. Any yahoo can blow airinto plastic to create a pillowy cushion, but what's it going to look like a day from now? A week? A year? Think about the regular rubber balloons yousee at a kid's birthday party. Day of the party, they're all nice and inflated. Next day, they're sinking a bit. Two days after the party,they're on the floor, all small and wrinkled. (Hey! I'm talking about balloons here.) Even an expensive AeroBed, if you've ever tried to use onefor more than one night... they need be be topped-off regularly as they lose air.
The problem's exactly the same with airsoles, because the idea is the same: if you take a gas and cram it into something under pressure, it's going tolook for a way out. Helium--from the rubber balloon example--makes the balloon rise because helium's about the lightest gas there is (hydrogen is theonly one that's lighter, but it's also highly flammable, and no one wants to re-create the "Hindenburg" at their kid's birthdayparty.) Helium is so light because its molecules are very small and fast-moving. But the small size and high energy of the helium moleculesalso means they have a relatively easy time finding ways to diffuse through the rubber balloon to the lower-pressure environment outside. Imagine beingtrapped inside a hedge maze. It's not easy, but given enough time and determination, anyone can find their way out. A helium-filled rubber balloonshrinks over time because the helium is finding its way out of the maze. Those shiny Mylar balloons are a lot better, right? The gas is the same, thematerial's just better at keeping it in--they'll last for days. But still, give them a week or two and they'll be flat also... just takes a littlelonger.
Imagine how much faster the helium would leak out of a balloon if you repeatedly squished it millions of times, scraped it, heated it, froze it, dunked it inwater, and so on, and you'll have an idea of how hard it is to be an airsole.
The plastic that the original airsoles were made from is not all that chemically different from a rubber balloon, so why did they keep their pressure for yearsand years? The real innovation came through finding that gas (sulfur hexafluoride, or "SF6") which--by gas standards--was too big and slow to leakout, no matter how much time it had to try and find a way through the airsole plastic. Back to the maze analogy: if you weighed a thousand pounds and weretrapped in a hedge maze, it wouldn't matter how much time you had--you're just too big and low-energy to ever find a way out.
As the article says, Nike went happily along with this "Air" technology (you've gotta admit "Air Max" sounds a whole lot better than"Sulfur Hexafluoride Max") until 1992, when an outside group brought it to their attention that SF6 was a potent "greenhouse gas". This isnot quite what someone said before... it's not the kind of thing that goes up into the atmosphere and f's up the ozone layer. What SF6 does,if/when it escapes into the atmosphere, is just stay there for a looong time before breaking down... and while it's up there, it helps to keep trapped heatinside the atmosphere. Like CO2, but much more so.
Back to airsoles: the natural thing was to try and find a way to make the same airsoles, but just fill them with actual, honest-to-God air (or just straightnitrogen, which is 80% of the air we breathe already). And for all the reasons already discussed, it's not a trivial problem. Everything that makes agood, durable airsole material is terrible at keeping gas inside, just like the helium balloon. And everything that keeps air inside performs terribly...they're cloudy, nasty-looking and shatter easily. Think of a 2-liter Coke bottle... nice and clear, and keeps carbonation in. But try flexing it hard afew times... it's going to get white and cloudy in a hurry, and probably break soon.
So yes, there really were giant teams of people working their %+#es off for 14 years to figure out this problem. I'm not going to say it was as hard assending a man to the moon, but I can relate. It took a team full of PhDs to figure out the material development (as the article says, the final solutioninvolved 65 layers of material to create something that looks like the original basic airsole plastic, but keeps nitrogen in foryears no matter how many times it's stomped on, rain or shine. It actually ends up somewhat similar to the way that plastics are created for foodpackaging--they have the same kind of "barrier layers" hidden inside. If air could diffuse into a yogurt package, it'd be skunked when youopened it, and if the pressurized carbonation could find a way out of a 2-liter Coke bottle, every one you opened would be flat.
On to the molding technology: the "hidden" types of Nike Air (2-film encapsulated air, Zoom) actually converted pretty easily once the new materialsolution was finalized. However, the Max Air products were incredibly more difficult, from both a cosmetic and performance standpoint. As y'all know, theold school airbags have a giant ugly seam going right down the middle of each visible window, and this was something of a weak point in the new material. The"thermoforming" method of molding things, as discussed in the article, was the missing link that finally enabled SF6-free Max-Air style airbags to becreated... yes, all visible Max products, not just the Air Max 360. Thermoforming enabled Nike to take that seam and offset it to one side,so it ends up safely buried in the midsole foam... again, you've noticed the no-seam on recent retros--right?
So the benefit of the new material and thermoforming molding process:
- completely eliminates a nasty environmental problem without compromising looks, pressures or performance
side benefit: hides the ugly center seam of the original airsoles
The disadvantages:
- new midsole molds required for every single existing shoe--this is tremendously expensive
- the offset molding of the seam means that new airbags aren't quite symmetrical top-to-bottom; therefore the windows sometimes have had to beredesigned slightly smaller to accommodate this.
Forget the aesthetic questions for a minute and think about this from a purely business perspective: The molds required to form the foam midsoles areexpensive, and I guarantee you that Nike's preference would have been to find a way to make "green" airsoles that kept the exactsame shape as the originals... they'd have been able to keep all of the existing molds, instead of having to redesign and remake them to fit the new,thermoformed versions that were reengineered to match as closely as possible. It just wasn't physically possible to create greener airsoles in the exactshapes of the old ones.
So, finally, to the haters:
- the 14 years of engineering, more expensive materials, and complete mold replacement is definitely not saving Nike $$$. Or even ¢.
- it was done because it was the right thing to do, believe it or not. It was obviously not done for PR, as some people have said. Seriously, you guysknow more details about shoes than almost anyone else, and most of you didn't even know the environmental story behind it... that tiny BusinessWeek storyis about the most publicity this giant effort has ever gotten. Nike knows how to advertise, and if they wanted to shout this particular green story you wouldhave heard it.
- Nike's new materials and processes are all freshly patented. Yes, there are some ancient Airsole patents that have expired or been allowed to lapse,which means some shoe companies have been putting out things that have the outside look of airsoles, but cut them apart (like I have) and you'll find nocushioning whatsoever... the plastics are as hard as $#!% and any gas they may have put inside has long since leaked out.
And before anyone else asks:
- yes, obviously I've been closely involved.
- no, I'm not speaking for Nike and these words/opinions are my own.
- yes, this is my first NikeTalk post. I'm a sneakerhead too, and I've been reading NikeTalk for 5 years (and Kicksology.net before that) butI've never bothered to post before... I just can't stand the misinformation any more. People saying that "Nike made my retro AM95 bubbles smallerto save a few pennies". Damn. I figure that since you all know and care so much about all the details that go into your shoes, you deserve (and willhopefully appreciate) knowing the truth. In my humble opinion, if you can't deal with the small change in the look of your retros, at least sit back andsavor the knowledge that your shoes are greener than you realized, without losing any of the performance.
Sorry for the long, preachy post. (Lecture over, please read pages 108-123 in Chapter 6, pop quiz tomorrow. Brrrrring!)
The whole idea behind "Air" cushioning, as invented by Frank Rudy (the inventor who shopped his idea around to a load of shoecompanies--including Adi--before finding a willing partner in Nike) was to create a durable cushioning system. Any yahoo can blow airinto plastic to create a pillowy cushion, but what's it going to look like a day from now? A week? A year? Think about the regular rubber balloons yousee at a kid's birthday party. Day of the party, they're all nice and inflated. Next day, they're sinking a bit. Two days after the party,they're on the floor, all small and wrinkled. (Hey! I'm talking about balloons here.) Even an expensive AeroBed, if you've ever tried to use onefor more than one night... they need be be topped-off regularly as they lose air.
The problem's exactly the same with airsoles, because the idea is the same: if you take a gas and cram it into something under pressure, it's going tolook for a way out. Helium--from the rubber balloon example--makes the balloon rise because helium's about the lightest gas there is (hydrogen is theonly one that's lighter, but it's also highly flammable, and no one wants to re-create the "Hindenburg" at their kid's birthdayparty.) Helium is so light because its molecules are very small and fast-moving. But the small size and high energy of the helium moleculesalso means they have a relatively easy time finding ways to diffuse through the rubber balloon to the lower-pressure environment outside. Imagine beingtrapped inside a hedge maze. It's not easy, but given enough time and determination, anyone can find their way out. A helium-filled rubber balloonshrinks over time because the helium is finding its way out of the maze. Those shiny Mylar balloons are a lot better, right? The gas is the same, thematerial's just better at keeping it in--they'll last for days. But still, give them a week or two and they'll be flat also... just takes a littlelonger.
Imagine how much faster the helium would leak out of a balloon if you repeatedly squished it millions of times, scraped it, heated it, froze it, dunked it inwater, and so on, and you'll have an idea of how hard it is to be an airsole.
The plastic that the original airsoles were made from is not all that chemically different from a rubber balloon, so why did they keep their pressure for yearsand years? The real innovation came through finding that gas (sulfur hexafluoride, or "SF6") which--by gas standards--was too big and slow to leakout, no matter how much time it had to try and find a way through the airsole plastic. Back to the maze analogy: if you weighed a thousand pounds and weretrapped in a hedge maze, it wouldn't matter how much time you had--you're just too big and low-energy to ever find a way out.
As the article says, Nike went happily along with this "Air" technology (you've gotta admit "Air Max" sounds a whole lot better than"Sulfur Hexafluoride Max") until 1992, when an outside group brought it to their attention that SF6 was a potent "greenhouse gas". This isnot quite what someone said before... it's not the kind of thing that goes up into the atmosphere and f's up the ozone layer. What SF6 does,if/when it escapes into the atmosphere, is just stay there for a looong time before breaking down... and while it's up there, it helps to keep trapped heatinside the atmosphere. Like CO2, but much more so.
Back to airsoles: the natural thing was to try and find a way to make the same airsoles, but just fill them with actual, honest-to-God air (or just straightnitrogen, which is 80% of the air we breathe already). And for all the reasons already discussed, it's not a trivial problem. Everything that makes agood, durable airsole material is terrible at keeping gas inside, just like the helium balloon. And everything that keeps air inside performs terribly...they're cloudy, nasty-looking and shatter easily. Think of a 2-liter Coke bottle... nice and clear, and keeps carbonation in. But try flexing it hard afew times... it's going to get white and cloudy in a hurry, and probably break soon.
So yes, there really were giant teams of people working their %+#es off for 14 years to figure out this problem. I'm not going to say it was as hard assending a man to the moon, but I can relate. It took a team full of PhDs to figure out the material development (as the article says, the final solutioninvolved 65 layers of material to create something that looks like the original basic airsole plastic, but keeps nitrogen in foryears no matter how many times it's stomped on, rain or shine. It actually ends up somewhat similar to the way that plastics are created for foodpackaging--they have the same kind of "barrier layers" hidden inside. If air could diffuse into a yogurt package, it'd be skunked when youopened it, and if the pressurized carbonation could find a way out of a 2-liter Coke bottle, every one you opened would be flat.
On to the molding technology: the "hidden" types of Nike Air (2-film encapsulated air, Zoom) actually converted pretty easily once the new materialsolution was finalized. However, the Max Air products were incredibly more difficult, from both a cosmetic and performance standpoint. As y'all know, theold school airbags have a giant ugly seam going right down the middle of each visible window, and this was something of a weak point in the new material. The"thermoforming" method of molding things, as discussed in the article, was the missing link that finally enabled SF6-free Max-Air style airbags to becreated... yes, all visible Max products, not just the Air Max 360. Thermoforming enabled Nike to take that seam and offset it to one side,so it ends up safely buried in the midsole foam... again, you've noticed the no-seam on recent retros--right?
So the benefit of the new material and thermoforming molding process:
- completely eliminates a nasty environmental problem without compromising looks, pressures or performance
side benefit: hides the ugly center seam of the original airsoles
The disadvantages:
- new midsole molds required for every single existing shoe--this is tremendously expensive
- the offset molding of the seam means that new airbags aren't quite symmetrical top-to-bottom; therefore the windows sometimes have had to beredesigned slightly smaller to accommodate this.
Forget the aesthetic questions for a minute and think about this from a purely business perspective: The molds required to form the foam midsoles areexpensive, and I guarantee you that Nike's preference would have been to find a way to make "green" airsoles that kept the exactsame shape as the originals... they'd have been able to keep all of the existing molds, instead of having to redesign and remake them to fit the new,thermoformed versions that were reengineered to match as closely as possible. It just wasn't physically possible to create greener airsoles in the exactshapes of the old ones.
So, finally, to the haters:
- the 14 years of engineering, more expensive materials, and complete mold replacement is definitely not saving Nike $$$. Or even ¢.
- it was done because it was the right thing to do, believe it or not. It was obviously not done for PR, as some people have said. Seriously, you guysknow more details about shoes than almost anyone else, and most of you didn't even know the environmental story behind it... that tiny BusinessWeek storyis about the most publicity this giant effort has ever gotten. Nike knows how to advertise, and if they wanted to shout this particular green story you wouldhave heard it.
- Nike's new materials and processes are all freshly patented. Yes, there are some ancient Airsole patents that have expired or been allowed to lapse,which means some shoe companies have been putting out things that have the outside look of airsoles, but cut them apart (like I have) and you'll find nocushioning whatsoever... the plastics are as hard as $#!% and any gas they may have put inside has long since leaked out.
And before anyone else asks:
- yes, obviously I've been closely involved.
- no, I'm not speaking for Nike and these words/opinions are my own.
- yes, this is my first NikeTalk post. I'm a sneakerhead too, and I've been reading NikeTalk for 5 years (and Kicksology.net before that) butI've never bothered to post before... I just can't stand the misinformation any more. People saying that "Nike made my retro AM95 bubbles smallerto save a few pennies". Damn. I figure that since you all know and care so much about all the details that go into your shoes, you deserve (and willhopefully appreciate) knowing the truth. In my humble opinion, if you can't deal with the small change in the look of your retros, at least sit back andsavor the knowledge that your shoes are greener than you realized, without losing any of the performance.
Sorry for the long, preachy post. (Lecture over, please read pages 108-123 in Chapter 6, pop quiz tomorrow. Brrrrring!)
- Jan 23, 2003
- 49
- 16
Props to MrKrispy and jfeezy for droppin' the knowledge. Their 2 posts need to be stickied, even though we all know no one reads the stickies...
- Jun 6, 2007
- 940
- 108
Agreed.
- Dec 5, 2007
- 193
- 11
well back in the day a lot of peoples bubbles would pop, so thats probably why Nike reduced the size.
- Apr 18, 2001
- 235
- 11
Originally Posted by a039481
Thanks MrKrispy1183 for the info. very educational.
good lookin out! thanks for the article!
add this to the archive so it can be referenced in the future!
- Jun 13, 2005
- 3,018
- 1,252
Why are they still using the same old air units for the forfoots on some shoes like the Air max 95, Air max sensation, and a couple of others. I thought theycouldnt use the old air units with the nitrogen. Nike has not gone totally seamless on all of their air units.
- May 15, 2003
- 56,687
- 65,664
Thanks for that post jfeezy
- Sep 28, 2004
- 13,924
- 5,900
thanks jfeezy. with that sort of insight id love more posts from a mind like that. insights and stories and how things were built give me a deeper appreciationfor nike and the shoes they make. i like seeing how and why something was built and then TESTING it
blco02
Banned
- Apr 21, 2001
- 3,932
- 1,281
Thanks for all that info - I just wish Nike and that team full of PhDs had spent some of that 14 years figuring how to make the bubbles the same size as theoriginals, thats all.
- Feb 16, 2006
- 2
- 10
Thanks jfeezy for one of the most enlightening and insightful posts I have ever read on NT.
As a side note, inhaling SF[sub]6[/sub] has an interesting biological effect: since it's considerably denser than air, sound travels through it at areduced velocity which will in turn cause a lower resonant frequency in the voice of a person who has just inhaled the gas. In other words, they'll becomea baritone (it has the exact opposite effect of inhaling helium).
As a side note, inhaling SF[sub]6[/sub] has an interesting biological effect: since it's considerably denser than air, sound travels through it at areduced velocity which will in turn cause a lower resonant frequency in the voice of a person who has just inhaled the gas. In other words, they'll becomea baritone (it has the exact opposite effect of inhaling helium).
- Aug 1, 2001
- 525
- 10
This is the most I've learned here on NikeTalk in a loooonnnnnggggg time. And I've been here for quite a while. Thanks to all who contributed. Maybenow some of the folks that are complaining will read this thread (not hopeful) and end their complaining about the air bubbles. Now they'll move on tosomething else to complain about.
typecast3
Banned
- Jan 3, 2007
- 554
- 10
why dont you just buy a 360 and shut the hell up hahahah
no seriously i dont know if you know but technology changes...... an air pad in 1983 isn't going to be the same today. its 20 years later on some of theseretros. give it a rest.
no seriously i dont know if you know but technology changes...... an air pad in 1983 isn't going to be the same today. its 20 years later on some of theseretros. give it a rest.
typecast3
Banned
- Jan 3, 2007
- 554
- 10
wow.... this is sort of true. its half true and half hog wash because this guy is spinning it from Nike's point of view. this isn't exactlywhat happened and notice the lack of any type of sources. hte bottom line is forget about the size of the air pad. get over it. things change. LOL thatit took this guy 30 min of venting to just say that.Originally Posted by jfeezy
If anyone's still reading this thread (and as trethousandgt said, this comes up all the time): This change is/was not about the $$$. If you haven't read the BusinessWeek article, read it thoroughly, then read it again. Then hang on as I geek out and drop some science in a long post.
The whole idea behind "Air" cushioning, as invented by Frank Rudy (the inventor who shopped his idea around to a load of shoe companies--including Adi--before finding a willing partner in Nike) was to create a durable cushioning system. Any yahoo can blow air into plastic to create a pillowy cushion, but what's it going to look like a day from now? A week? A year? Think about the regular rubber balloons you see at a kid's birthday party. Day of the party, they're all nice and inflated. Next day, they're sinking a bit. Two days after the party, they're on the floor, all small and wrinkled. (Hey! I'm talking about balloons here.) Even an expensive AeroBed, if you've ever tried to use one for more than one night... they need be be topped-off regularly as they lose air.
The problem's exactly the same with airsoles, because the idea is the same: if you take a gas and cram it into something under pressure, it's going to look for a way out. Helium--from the rubber balloon example--makes the balloon rise because helium's about the lightest gas there is (hydrogen is the only one that's lighter, but it's also highly flammable, and no one wants to re-create the "Hindenburg" at their kid's birthday party.) Helium is so light because its molecules are very small and fast-moving. But the small size and high energy of the helium molecules also means they have a relatively easy time finding ways to diffuse through the rubber balloon to the lower-pressure environment outside. Imagine being trapped inside a hedge maze. It's not easy, but given enough time and determination, anyone can find their way out. A helium-filled rubber balloon shrinks over time because the helium is finding its way out of the maze. Those shiny Mylar balloons are a lot better, right? The gas is the same, the material's just better at keeping it in--they'll last for days. But still, give them a week or two and they'll be flat also... just takes a little longer.
Imagine how much faster the helium would leak out of a balloon if you repeatedly squished it millions of times, scraped it, heated it, froze it, dunked it in water, and so on, and you'll have an idea of how hard it is to be an airsole.
The plastic that the original airsoles were made from is not all that chemically different from a rubber balloon, so why did they keep their pressure for years and years? The real innovation came through finding that gas (sulfur hexafluoride, or "SF6") which--by gas standards--was too big and slow to leak out, no matter how much time it had to try and find a way through the airsole plastic. Back to the maze analogy: if you weighed a thousand pounds and were trapped in a hedge maze, it wouldn't matter how much time you had--you're just too big and low-energy to ever find a way out.
As the article says, Nike went happily along with this "Air" technology (you've gotta admit "Air Max" sounds a whole lot better than "Sulfur Hexafluoride Max") until 1992, when an outside group brought it to their attention that SF6 was a potent "greenhouse gas". This is not quite what someone said before... it's not the kind of thing that goes up into the atmosphere and f's up the ozone layer. What SF6 does, if/when it escapes into the atmosphere, is just stay there for a looong time before breaking down... and while it's up there, it helps to keep trapped heat inside the atmosphere. Like CO2, but much more so.
Back to airsoles: the natural thing was to try and find a way to make the same airsoles, but just fill them with actual, honest-to-God air (or just straight nitrogen, which is 80% of the air we breathe already). And for all the reasons already discussed, it's not a trivial problem. Everything that makes a good, durable airsole material is terrible at keeping gas inside, just like the helium balloon. And everything that keeps air inside performs terribly... they're cloudy, nasty-looking and shatter easily. Think of a 2-liter Coke bottle... nice and clear, and keeps carbonation in. But try flexing it hard a few times... it's going to get white and cloudy in a hurry, and probably break soon.
So yes, there really were giant teams of people working their %+#es off for 14 years to figure out this problem. I'm not going to say it was as hard as sending a man to the moon, but I can relate. It took a team full of PhDs to figure out the material development (as the article says, the final solution involved 65 layers of material to create something that looks like the original basic airsole plastic, but keeps nitrogen in for years no matter how many times it's stomped on, rain or shine. It actually ends up somewhat similar to the way that plastics are created for food packaging--they have the same kind of "barrier layers" hidden inside. If air could diffuse into a yogurt package, it'd be skunked when you opened it, and if the pressurized carbonation could find a way out of a 2-liter Coke bottle, every one you opened would be flat.
On to the molding technology: the "hidden" types of Nike Air (2-film encapsulated air, Zoom) actually converted pretty easily once the new material solution was finalized. However, the Max Air products were incredibly more difficult, from both a cosmetic and performance standpoint. As y'all know, the old school airbags have a giant ugly seam going right down the middle of each visible window, and this was something of a weak point in the new material. The "thermoforming" method of molding things, as discussed in the article, was the missing link that finally enabled SF6-free Max-Air style airbags to be created... yes, all visible Max products, not just the Air Max 360. Thermoforming enabled Nike to take that seam and offset it to one side, so it ends up safely buried in the midsole foam... again, you've noticed the no-seam on recent retros--right?
So the benefit of the new material and thermoforming molding process:
- completely eliminates a nasty environmental problem without compromising looks, pressures or performance
side benefit: hides the ugly center seam of the original airsoles
The disadvantages:
- new midsole molds required for every single existing shoe--this is tremendously expensive
- the offset molding of the seam means that new airbags aren't quite symmetrical top-to-bottom; therefore the windows sometimes have had to be redesigned slightly smaller to accommodate this.
Forget the aesthetic questions for a minute and think about this from a purely business perspective: The molds required to form the foam midsoles are expensive, and I guarantee you that Nike's preference would have been to find a way to make "green" airsoles that kept the exact same shape as the originals... they'd have been able to keep all of the existing molds, instead of having to redesign and remake them to fit the new, thermoformed versions that were reengineered to match as closely as possible. It just wasn't physically possible to create greener airsoles in the exact shapes of the old ones.
So, finally, to the haters:
- the 14 years of engineering, more expensive materials, and complete mold replacement is definitely not saving Nike $$$. Or even ¢.
- it was done because it was the right thing to do, believe it or not. It was obviously not done for PR, as some people have said. Seriously, you guys know more details about shoes than almost anyone else, and most of you didn't even know the environmental story behind it... that tiny BusinessWeek story is about the most publicity this giant effort has ever gotten. Nike knows how to advertise, and if they wanted to shout this particular green story you would have heard it.
- Nike's new materials and processes are all freshly patented. Yes, there are some ancient Airsole patents that have expired or been allowed to lapse, which means some shoe companies have been putting out things that have the outside look of airsoles, but cut them apart (like I have) and you'll find no cushioning whatsoever... the plastics are as hard as $#!% and any gas they may have put inside has long since leaked out.
And before anyone else asks:
- yes, obviously I've been closely involved.
- no, I'm not speaking for Nike and these words/opinions are my own.
- yes, this is my first NikeTalk post. I'm a sneakerhead too, and I've been reading NikeTalk for 5 years (and Kicksology.net before that) but I've never bothered to post before... I just can't stand the misinformation any more. People saying that "Nike made my retro AM95 bubbles smaller to save a few pennies". Damn. I figure that since you all know and care so much about all the details that go into your shoes, you deserve (and will hopefully appreciate) knowing the truth. In my humble opinion, if you can't deal with the small change in the look of your retros, at least sit back and savor the knowledge that your shoes are greener than you realized, without losing any of the performance.
Sorry for the long, preachy post. (Lecture over, please read pages 108-123 in Chapter 6, pop quiz tomorrow. Brrrrring!)
- Dec 26, 2003
- 121
- 10
Thank you to jfeezy for dropping further knowledge on the article I posted.
MODS, can we get a sticky or get this post archived so as to have a reference point for this type of question in the future, please?
Also, TimCity2000, I promised you a link to that other article. I will post it in this thread when my laptop gets serviced, the screen crapped out on meseveral days ago.
MODS, can we get a sticky or get this post archived so as to have a reference point for this type of question in the future, please?
Also, TimCity2000, I promised you a link to that other article. I will post it in this thread when my laptop gets serviced, the screen crapped out on meseveral days ago.
- Jul 6, 2006
- 408
- 11
Hey party people,
Just dropping by to inform you all that there is a very easy
way to make the Air Units bigger yourself. It's a four step process
that my buds and I conceived nearly a year ago now.
The only advice I can give you is "look within before without"
And as the great Michael Scott once said,
"You have to play to win....but you also have to win to play"
That will be all.
Any inquiries, feel free to PM, I'm thinking about applying
For a patent, seeing as it extends the life of the shoe as well. Neat concept.
Cheers!
Just dropping by to inform you all that there is a very easy
way to make the Air Units bigger yourself. It's a four step process
that my buds and I conceived nearly a year ago now.
The only advice I can give you is "look within before without"
And as the great Michael Scott once said,
"You have to play to win....but you also have to win to play"
That will be all.
Any inquiries, feel free to PM, I'm thinking about applying
For a patent, seeing as it extends the life of the shoe as well. Neat concept.
Cheers!
- Jul 2, 2006
- 7,805
- 247
^^ My head is spinnin' right now
- Jul 23, 2005
- 3,166
- 744
- Jun 13, 2005
- 3,018
- 1,252
Any thoughts on this?
- Jul 2, 2006
- 7,805
- 247
The forefoot air units in the Air Max plus actually got bigger when the primary heel air units became seamless and slightly smaller.
- Jan 9, 2008
- 75
- 10
El Bro wrote:
El Bro wrote:
Why are they still using the same old air units for the forfoots on some shoes like the Air max 95, Air max sensation, and a couple of others. I thought they couldnt use the old air units with the nitrogen. Nike has not gone totally seamless on all of their air units.
Any thoughts on this?
El Bro, good lookin' out on the forefoot airsoles. (Can't believe I forgot about this.) Yes, Nike was actuallyable to find a material/gas solution that eliminated SF6 using the existing blowmold technology (so the geometry stayed exactly the same, and the seamsremained in the middle of the visible window). However, this solution worked for low-profile forefoot airsoles only! When this sameapproach was tried on heel and full-length airsoles, though, it failed spectacularly... the thermoforming technology is the only way to make thosetaller types of airsoles work. So that's why you may still see some forefoot airsoles with seams, paired up with newer heel units.
@typecast3:
"its half true and half hog wash because this guy is spinning it from Nike's point of view."
I clearly said that I've been closely involved, and that I'm speaking for myself.
"this isn't exactly what happened and notice the lack of any type of sources."
I am the source. Me. I personally worked on the team solving these problems for close to seven years. If you want to troll and pretend youknow something I don't, knock yourself out... it's a free internet. As I said, this was my first post after lurking for 5+ years, so I can understandquestioning based on that. If you seriously need references, though, I can think of at least one longtime NT moderator that'd vouch for my credibility.
"LOL that it took this guy 30 min of venting to just say that."
It took a lot more than that. First of all, I'm lucky enough to have (I think) one of the greatest jobs I can imagine. I tried to get my foot in the doorhere for four years. Once I got in, spent almost seven years working hard on these airsole issues before transitioning into the dream job I've beenwanting this whole time. I finally made it and it's as great as I hoped it would be... better, even. Honestly, it's up there with gettinginto/graduating from college, meeting/marrying my wife, and having our kids on the "greatest things I accomplished in my life" scale.
Having said that, the safest thing for me is to assume that anything I say in a public internet forum about my employer could be traced back to me somehow, soI'm never, ever going to jeopardize what I've worked so hard for by A) lying about Nike stuff, or B) blurting out some secret, proprietaryknowledge just so I can impress a bunch of people on the internet I've never met. So you can be sure that anything I post here will be non-secret truth,that I've written and rewritten and carefully thought over to make sure I'm not endangering myself. The only reason I spoke up in the first place isthat the truth is actually, publicly out there (in the BusinessWeek article MrKrispy posted) but that many people who are truly interested (you all) didn'tknow about it, and I could help by filling in the boring scientific details of why the airsole windows had to change, to those connoisseurs who'dappreciate it. That's all.
