This thing is driving me crazy!! ヾ(｡ꏿ﹏ꏿ)ﾉﾞ

What the heck is it?? A gearbox of some kind? Maybe a belt went around that spool-like piece, so the rotation of the shaft would also cause whatever was at the other end of that belt to rotate. Or maybe it's the other way around, and the belt is actually what powered the shaft. It looks like the shaft and all those gears are going to turn just so that one little perpendicular gear will rotate that dangly thing in the first picture. What is that thing, anyway???



Have you figured out what the cross-piece is that I've circled in the photo below? Are those wires inside the messy yellow circle I drew? Are they windings? Wow, this is terrible. I'm so clueless I don't even know who I could ask to help us figure it out...