Honestly I bought this scale because it was the cheapest on Amazon (doubled the price at the time). It was 14 inches and I only needed 4 inches of travel for my application, but the extra length doesn't affect anything other than REALLY making sure there's no danger of bumping into the end stops. The seller could have been more helpful with the wiring before buying, but I figured it out easily enough and now everything works fine. It wasn't "prohibitively expensive", it only required a few…