Finds from modern Turkey and excavation in the Mosel region of Germany show that as early as the 3rd century A.D. the Romans used the principle of power transmission via crankshaft.
Whe early devices were mainly used for sawing stone.
In the late medieval mining industry in the Erzgebirge region of German, the so-called "art with the bent crank" was developed.
To pump water out of ever increasingly deep mineshafts, one needed efficient lifting machines and here again one turned to the principle of motion transformation. The crankshaft attached to the wheel acted on the pump rod to produce an up-and-down motion, thus causing the water to rise.
With the invention of the steam engine, the direction of force transmission was reversed. The linear motion of the steam driven piston was now converted into the rotary motion of the flywheel. In 1825 this principle was first successfully put into practice for locomotion by the Englishman George Stephenson. By transferring the linear movement of the piston produced by the steam engine to the crankshaft of the so-called traction wheel set, the locomotive moved forward.
However it would be another 50 years before crankshafts came to be used in combustion engines.
Ever since 1911 the production of crankshafts has been the main constant running through the 100 year history of ALFING. Their manufacture is central to all the activities of the firm. And despite all advances in technology, crankshafts still remain an indispensible mechanical part of all petrol and diesel engines, for which there is no substitute. The forgings for large crankshafts are produced in the ALFING forge. From the need to constantly increase the strength of crankshafts, parallel to the induction-hardening technology itself we have also developed the appropriate machines to carry this out.
