Bone constraints for tiered mechanical movement - Moving A a certain amount before B moves

Question

Hello Blender enthousiasts!

I am trying to create a tiered mechanical movement, similar to how a forklift might work. Aka the Fork can move up on the Z axis until it reaches the top of the Raising Mast, before the Raising Mast starts moving up on the Rotation Mast. (See picture below)

All tutorials I find are regarding multi-stage pistons, which would auto-raise the Raising Mast according to the height of the Fork. Another method I found involved the Limit Location constraint, but this would result in moving each segment manually.

Is there a way to set an inverse kinematic on these things? Does anyone have a solid tutorial regarding tiered level movement?

Many thanks in advance.

(Note: The Rotation Mast can rotate on the X axis. Obviously, any rotation of this mast should not break the positions of the bones, and rotation should be applied accordingly.)

Answer 1

You asked this elsewhere, and I answered there, but there's nothing wrong with a SE answer.

If we want the fork to get raised first, and the raising mast to follow only after, then let's parent both fork and raising mast to rotation mast, and have raising mast follow fork only via a floor constraint:

Here, the same armature in four poses, conforming to the four pics you have. We set the elevation of the fork by raising ctrl bone; fork is floored, with rotation, to the Z axis of ctrl. Liftmast follows fork due to a similar floor constraint targeting fork, shown, which will drag liftmast along with fork, but only when fork gets 2m away or further.

Notice the outliner for heirarchy.