Back in the 1970's I purchased a home made rocker for sheet film. It had three trays for 4x5 film. It moved slow enough that the fluid flowed to the end, then sort of splashed the other way, thus mixing the chemicals during the process to a small extent.
It worked well, except for one issue that had to be watched. The developing action on the ends of the sheet film was slightly greater than the center of the film, due to turbulence, which of course caused more development on the ends than the center of the negative.
I think it would have been considerably more nuetral if there had been some sort of minor tilting in the 90 degree axis as well.
in manual agitation, I suspect most of us rock the tray end to end a couple of times, then side to side a couple, then back to end to end, etc. It's almost necessary for a motorized rocker to have some of this same action to assure more even development.
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