scissor lift calulations

[mwrother]

I've been designing a scissor lift. I found the calculations in engineers edge. I input the numbers and came up with a force result. the result didn't make sense so I wrote the formula in excel and got a quite a different number, almost 1/2 what the engineer edge calculator gave me. the forumla is: F=( W+Wa)/2 Tan (Angle). Where did I go wrong? it seemed pretty straight forward.

[Kelly_Bramble]

Can you be more specific? Which EE webpage are you refering to?

[mwrother]

OK, I got it. I didn't know that excel uses radians. I was inputing degs. once I converted my degs to rads it work.

[Kelly_Bramble]

Ya, that always gets me that excel defaults to radians. I don't think there is a way to defualt otherwise.

[mwrother]

thanks. I guess reading the instructions could of helped. But then, why do that....