SEMA is a 50-some-odd-year-old convention for automotive industry peeps to show off their wares to buyers and enthusiasts who are industry insiders. Local Motors is an automotive and general vehicular innovator and co-creation company who is making another 3D printed car at this year's SEMA.
The Office Chairiot is a "Personal Project" on the Local Motors website. As such, it gets loving and attention from the engineers and smarty-smart people at LM Labs, a community collaboration and maker space for anyone who has ideas they wish to move to the next level, especially ideas around transportation. LM Labs liked the Office Chairiot enough to sponsor it in the Labs and to help develop it further from a silly, over-engineered, 1½ orsepower IKEA chair to a full-fledged platform for movin' stuff!
All that said, Local Motors asked if the Office Chairiot could be displayed in their Idea Booth at SEMA 2014. The answer was a no-brainer and here we are in Las Vegas!
4 weeks ago, the chassis looked like that (above). The IKEA chair was semi-permanently, if not inconveniently bolted to the chassis and the chassis was bare pine. I had to scramble to get the beast "show ready" for SEMA. A little glossy black spray paint, some minor upgrades later and she's show ready, save for a few features, like sound and wireless control.
She came together pretty well and I was able to drift her all over the pavement in front of the Idea Booth at SEMA 2014. The only bummer was that the lighting wasn't functional while the chair was in drivable condition. Those two major feature sets were mutually exclusive. So, one day the crowd got a light show, most of the other days they got an IKEA chair drifting show.
Here's a quick video of the lighting being controlled from the key fob:
Here's a quick video of the Office Chairiot Mk II drifting at SEMA 2014:
Not bad for the first official public showing!