The Maya how To’s Channel has posted a look at animating a mechanical assembly line in Maya, using basic keyframe techniques as well as using some of Maya’s constraints to help with the animation process, as well as set driven keys to drive animation.
This tutorial shows you how to keyframe animate basic transform values and tweak that animation using the Graph Editor and how to animate rigs using keyframe animation and animation constraints
This multi part look at animating an assembly line in Maya is aimed for the beginner, or someone who is just getting started, and covers some great core concepts for using Maya’s animation tools, and a good overview of the workflow that Maya incorporates for animation.