Comment by auxym

A lot of these sorts of mechanisms have however been made obsolete by modern mechatronics.

For example, washing machines used to have complex gear boxes that made that back and forth motion during washes and also had a second mode for high speed spin cycles. The machine I bought last year has a direct drive BDC motor that simply used electronic control to produce all the motion types. It's just cheaper and in most cases more reliable.

My previous machined died from gearbox failure and replacing it was not economically viable.