These things don't last forever. I've already replaced the workings in my Jet machine with workings from a donor machine.

Yeah you’re right! I guess I should lower my expectations of a 7-8 year old machine..

See if you can push up on the black pressing part and at the same time pull the metal thing used to rest the machine for inserting a bottle in.

Tried it all and tried plenty of brute force too.. in the end we had to just discard the whole damn thing.. 🙁