I was browsing around the net and came across an awesome site with Kinetic Art machines by David C. Roy http://www.woodthatworks.com/ David makes these awesome wooden models that work. This is my interpretation of one of David's models and not meant to be a direct copy. I have added and changed a couple of things.

Modelled in MoI. Materials and rendering in Cinema 4D. The 5 strings going around the pulleys are curves in MoI. These were imported into Cinema 4D as Adobe Illustrator curves. I then used Circle Profile splines and Sweepnurbs objects to add thickness. In Cinema 4D I added 2 cogs and a couple of cyclinders.

This machine looks cool when animated. You can see David's real working machine at his site. I have animated my version and you can download the animation here: http://www.c4dcafe.com/3dkiwi/videos/AbstractAnim2.zip (Zipped QT 16mb)