Thanks for the feedback,
That's part of the main puzzle of the game - the machine in the centre of the adjacent room - and as such it's intended to be hard.
I haven't heard reports of the puzzle not working yet, so you might be following one of my false leads :) If you find yourself absolutely stuck you can always check YouTube for walkthroughs, there's quite a bit of them.
As a puzzle game I'm perfectly happy with people spending "long time" on it, as that's what a puzzle is!
Ev