The phrase "an elaborate device" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe a complex or intricate tool, mechanism, or system that serves a specific purpose.
Example: "The engineer designed an elaborate device to automate the manufacturing process, incorporating advanced technology and innovative features."
Alternatives: "a complex apparatus" or "a sophisticated mechanism."
He will not tell her exactly what it is, but eight rackety tea chests are delivered to her work room and inside the chests, together with the jumbled parts of some elaborate device, she finds a pile of antique notebooks tied with raffia.
In turning short story to novel, he also introduced an elaborate literary device.
We've always thought the process of crushing or pressing the carcass in an elaborate screw device a bit theatrical, but the resulting juices add unique intense flavor to a sauce that's made immediately at table side.
But the most important finds proved to be a few green, corroded lumps the last remnants of an elaborate mechanical device.The Antikythera mechanism, as it is now known, was originally housed in a wooden box about the size of a shoebox, with dials on the outside and a complex assembly of bronze gear wheels within.
This "motivated reasoning" might also cause some to view the latest United Nations climate report as yet more evidence that climate science is an elaborate cloaking device for lefty socialists to take over the world while they melt the world's ice with a top secret invisible ray gun.
The Kamado grill's inventor, Richard Johnson, claims to have gotten the idea for making these genie-in-the-bottle designs back in the 1960s when he discovered that the Japanese cooked their rice in an elaborate ceramic device called a "Mushikamado".
According to Child's press release, From Farthest Known Objects is set to be something of a concept LP, for which his collection of hardware became an "elaborate reception device that allowed [him] to tune into transmissions from Distant Galaxies," receiving "Pop Hits... being played on their radio stations".
The most elaborate device was what Ken called the Nervous System, which created a shallow three-dimensionality in movies shot flat by running identical footage inch by inch, and slightly out of phase, through a pair of interlocked projectors fronted by a large, propellerlike shutter.
And, like Mankiewicz's film, Hong's puts its elaborate device of memory to direct, strongly emotional ends; it's a surprisingly funny film (as the title suggests) about the pain of longing and the strange twists that unexpected love gives a life's path.
