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crank
Sign in to savemechanism where an arm attached to a rotating shaft by which circular motion is imparted to the shaft
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Hand crank for a winch on a sailboat - commonly referred to as a winch handle.
A crank is an arm attached at a right angle to a rotating shaft by which circular motion is imparted to or received from the shaft. When combined with a connecting rod, it can be used to convert circular motion into reciprocating motion, or vice versa. The arm may be a bent portion of the shaft, or a separate arm or disk attached to it. Attached to the end of the crank by a pivot is a rod, usually called a connecting rod (conrod).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “crank” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.