How to find the moment of an arm

[Greg Ross]

Matt,

Am I understanding correctly that you're planning on deploying your scissor lift other than vertically? In my experience, that's a bad idea. You might be able to ameliorate problems if you have some (extreme) precision machining capabilities. But even if you do, you might want to reconsider your design.

Consider that each joint in your mechanism will have some slop in it. This causes sag when the lift is deployed non-vertically. And each stage in your scissor mechanism compounds the sag. If you have very many stages, you will have a LOT of sagging going on out at the end of your arm.