That live example doesn't look like the text is getting shortened at all. It shows 3 lines because the fourth line is hidden due to a fixed height and hidden overflow of its container.
It looks like that Ellipsis plugin calculates whether a text element needs to be truncated by comparing its total height to the height of n (here, 3) lines. Since you have a fixed height set in CSS for that div, the plugin looks at it and says to itself "that element has a height less than or equal to the height of 3 lines of text" and so it doesn't do anything.
You are calling it correctly, though, and I see that it works on your title "Metal construction..."