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Once I had set goals for analysis, I measured the link lengths of the bolt cutters image, and then I scaled them to 24" size: a common size used for metals.
The next step in the analysis was to create a diagram and develop a system of equations to relate linkage position, angular velocity, and linear velocity.
To verify my intuition of how the links moved, I constructed a two dimensional sketch to scale in SOLIDWORKS, and I later found it to be an excellent method of verifying position results yielded by my code.
Now that I was confident in which parameters were dependent on each other, he next step in the analysis was to create a diagram and develop a system of equations to relate linkage position, angular velocity, and linear velocity.