I have a washing machine transmission. It's heavy: built like a tank. It has an input shaft that takes one way rotary motion and reduces the speed and converts that to a different kind of rotary motion that goes one way then reverses itself with no meaningful dwell period.
It's a really strong assembly so it can drive a heavy load against lots of resistance. But it's not fast enough to use as a shaker driver for separating soil from rocks on a screen.
I can't think what to do with it.
It looks so very useful (you gotta know this feeling) that I can't bring myself to toss it.
What shop tool, what machine can take advantage of this sort of reversing rotary motion.