As the shape memory material Nitinol (55% Nickel– 45% Titanium alloy) emerges to find more and more applications in aerospace, medical and commercial industries, understanding the effects of material processing becomes increasingly important.  More so than other materials, properties and shape recovery characteristics of Nitinol are significantly affected by it’s texturing during fabrication processes and subsequent heat treatment operations.  Published literature is almost exclusively related to processing and testing of thin wall, smaller diameter tubing and wire devices, usually exhibiting superelastic characteristics.  The mechanism of deformation is well characterized in polycrystalline NiTi shape memory alloys subjected to monotonic tensile loading conditions.  However, the characteristics of deformation in polycrystalline NiTi subjected to compression deviate from the well-documented monotonic tensile response and until recently, there has been rare attempt to understand the tension/compression asymmetry for textured and untextured polycrystalline NiTi.  It is well understood that Nitinol wire products are pulled and bent in tension in order to prepare and set the material for shape recovery, whereas Nitinol tubing is drawn over an inner mandrel to expand the diameter circumferentially.  In both instances the material is stretched between 2%-8% to prepare and set the material for shape recovery.  The motivation for this research is to provide the first characterization of the shape recovery effects of “bulk” Nitinol material under compressive deformation versus the often practiced and well understood tensile loading of wire and thin wall tubing.  Compressive martensite deformation of “bulk” Nitinol can be used in the fabrication of many large devices such as actuator, springs, torque tubes, shafts, dampeners and coupling stock.  To our knowledge, this work is the first to quantify the shape recovery and superelastic characteristics of Nitinol “bulk” material.