system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Half-Life] Why did the Science Team have Gordon suit up and push the crystal into the spectrometer himself? They have more than enough automated machines to do it for him.
gpt
This is a lab not a factory, You only build a machine for something you do regularly enough to automate it. 

Assume that they're not always putting stuff in the spectrometer of the same physical dimensions, last weeks scheduled test might have involved it in a different configuration. Next week the device might be broken apart when they realize something about it isn't conducive to the test they want and so on.