I know that little scissor jack. I once took a pair of them and removed the screw drive and replaced it with a Pneumatic cylinder which was fired by a valve linked to a conveyor drive wheel, such that every 6 inches of belt travel the ram fired, causing the jack to extend in a horizontal direction across the direction of belt movement, thus pushing stacks of pencils against the far wall of the conveyor so that they would be nicely stacked going into the next hopper to be feed through the next painting sequence.
Hope any of that made sense. Certainly, a case where a picture is worth a thousand words ..... so I guess I should go looking for a picture?!?!
Some amazing things to be seen at that show, for certain and for sure!!!
It made perfect sense! I imagined precisely what you described.
Gil