This is my entry for the Festival of Mundanity, a contest put on by The Lego Car Blog and BrickNerd. To be honest, Technic builds are made for this contest. Up until recently, Technic had many sets that would be considered by many people to be mundane vehicles. Yes, there are flashy vehicles like race cars and dune buggys and stunt planes, but there were also plenty of backhoes and tractors and excavators. Now, it's mostly pullbacks and pretty shells with minimal substance, basically turning Technic into Racers. But, that's a rant for another day.

Initially, I had wanted to build a truck with trailer, and include the scissor lift as part of a 3 vehicle ensemble, but ultimately I decided to stick with just the scissor lift, because my depression intervened I decided to make one good model versus try to do three. Plus, the scissor lift is plenty mundane on its own. To really double down on the mundanity, this lift is in the color scheme of the ubiquitous blue Genie scissor lifts. Scissor lifts are really not that glamorous, even among construction vehicles. Like, people don't really see them as cool, and only really buy models or build them out of Lego for diorama purposes. Thus, a perfect fit for this contest. Now, in spite of the apparent simplicity, this model is deceptively complicated. Getting the steering to work to achieve the right steering angle was kind of hard, and the lifting turned out to be shockingly difficult.

The lift, at rest. The work deck can extend and retract, just like the real thing. It is locked in place by a spring loaded latch, which is weirdly one of the things I am most proud of. It's a simple, but elegant solution.

Just pull the lever...

...And the platform slides right out. The extension locks in both positions.

There is an opening door at the back, with a working latch, and a ladder leading up to the platform. The bottoms step of the ladder folds, this is not a feature on the real machine, but a concession to allow access to the steering knob.

The ladder folded, revealing the steering knob.

The steering was actually somewhat hard to do, it was quite difficult to get the extreme steering angle. Real scissor lifts can actually turn the front wheels almost 90 degrees, to allow for a really tight turning radius. This model can't quite do that, but it's nearly as far, and getting the chassis to be both narrow and flat was hard. Also visible is the reversing box, this is so that the steering knob rotates in the expected direction.

Maximum steering angle. The model will actually turn around the inside rear tire, much like a real scissor lift. I actually have firsthand experience with this, I used to work for a certain orange hardware store, in the rental department. Our store had some larger equipment, including scissor lifts, and at times I had to park them. Figuring out how to turn was interesting.

Maximum extension. Technically, the lift could go higher, but I could not actually figure out a solution that would work, so I went with the big linear actuator. I originally had a mini LA directly pulling the bottom of the scissor linkage, but that proved to be not up to the task, the clutch kept slipping. The lift has about 19 centimeters of travel, going from a deck height of 8 centimeters to a height of 27 centimeters at maximum extension. The deck is about 15 centimeters long, front to back between the guard rails, and can be extended to 21 centimeters. The lift function is controlled by the 12Z gear at the front. This is really the only good spot for it. I thought this would be better than having both knobs on the back, which would interfere with the rear ladder. In addition, the steering and lift would never be used together.

Technically speaking, this is in scale with Technic figures, sort of . The most common kind of Genie scissor lifts are only 32 inches wide, while this model to scale would be more than twice as wide. However, large lifts like this do exist, so I think it still counts.

One last glamor shot. Building in blue is hard. Also, the gray connectors at the corners are not random, those are actually tie off points, like real scissor lifts have.

I am very happy with this model. It looks right, has pretty much all the functions of a real machine, and was actually finished on time.

Just as an aside, this model was inspired by something I had to do at my rental job. Usually, our scissor lifts had to be delivered to job sites, so we had a guy from the vendor that maintained the large rental equipment come out and pick up the lift using a special trailer. The trailer in question was made by JLG, and had a deck that could be lowered to the ground so the scissor lift, with its low ground clearance, could be driven on. I had initially want to replicate the full setup, of the truck, with repair tools, the JLG Triple L trailer, and a scissor lift. I scrapped the trailer because the ramp I built was ultimately still too steep for my scissor lift model to drive on, and there was no way to change that, so the entry is just the lift itself.

Later on, after I do some digital work, I might post some pictures of the innards of this thing, it is tightly packed.

Thanks for looking.

Very nice work.  Thanks for posting.

Love it! I've always been fascinated by scissor lifts ever since I first saw them as B models for 853 and 8860.

I usually work with those machines, very welldone MOC.

I love it! The sliding platform is impressive and I love the color choice!

This looks great. Any videos of operation? I'm guessing the steering does not work from the platform? In real lifts I'm guessing the steering is basically a remote control - electrically transmitted from the platform. Is the black gear at the back for raising the lift?

Nice model and the functions you were able to put in. Now need to construct a safety harness and give him some training, and tell not to use tywraps to keep the door open.

Only thing I haven't seen on any scissor lift yet, is the flaps on the bottom going down/up when lifting/lowering. Would be great if that could be build in aswell.

It looks really neat.