Rigging constraints, linear motion to rotary motion

[Basho]

hi, i am having a bit of trouble rigging up a machine movement. something similar to the action of a luger pistol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9adOzT_qMq0

what i want is for the piston at the end (which would correspond to the bolt in the video above) to only move in a linear fashion and not rotate or move off-axis.
using inverse kinetics, moving this piston part should move the lever parts so they rotate around their respective hinging points (again, as in the video above)

i tried some different things but i have little experience with rigging, so i dont really know what i am doing, and at best end up with the piston moving linearly, but also rotating a bit which it shouldn't.

i tried messing with constraints, and i tried messing with pole targets (in the IK settings) but i dont think i figured out how to use it yet.

how would i go about restricting the movement of the different parts? i dont know what to search so finding relevant info is a problem for me at this point. any ideas or links of interest?

[criticalphil]

i would recommend you watch this video on IK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-5ZR45y9RM

[Basho]

hey, that helped a lot with getting into it. i also managed to figure out what i was doing wrong (at least for now) with the rig in my previous post.

i set it up the same way this time too, with the IK target bone at the last bone in the rig (at the piston/bolt part) and while i got more predictable results thanks to the tutorial video, i still had the same issue as before with the piston/bolt part of the machine rotating and moving around when it shouldn't.

i managed to solve this by putting the IK target bone on the second last bone in the rig, instead of at the very end, and putting location/rotation constraints as needed on the bones.
so now by moving the target bone in pose mode, the "lever" parts are bending while the piston/bolt moves in a linear fashion. i also put a bend on the levers in the base un-posed rig, so they bend in the desired direction.

thanks, now i think i can keep experimenting with this without succumbing to frustration