Ice makers-anyone know them?

   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #1  

Hay Dude

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Have a Scotsman Ice maker in my kitchen. Love it. Makes perfect cubes for soft drinks, adult beverages or when one of the kids needs lots of ice for a bruise, or a cooler for sports drinks.
Generally, it works great. It happily harvests cubes.
However, once every few months, the cubes melt and it stops harvesting cubes. It won’t make enough cubes to keep the tub full to the point where it just runs and makes nothing.
I tried cleaning it and looking for anything, but there’s nothing obvious
Finally, I just began unplugging it for 2 days, then plugging it back in. It triggers something and it works again very well.
Any idea why it stops making cubes, then works again after 2 days of being turned off?
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   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #2  
Water is freezing in the supply line in the back of the unit? Filter is needing replaced?
 
   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #3  
I am far far from an expert on this, and hope that some refrigeration man will come along and tell us the facts, BUT if I was to guess, I would guess that the compressor may have a thermal cutout and the compressor may be getting hot and this thermal "fuse" opens and stops operation. When all cools down it automatically resets and the compressor will start again and start the cooling process. The thing is essentially a small freezer with a big icemaker like your normal fridge has. Perhaps it is low on coolant?. This is all speculation on my part, so don't take this as gospel.
 
   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #4  
We didn’t have that brand, but had a large ice machine at the tennis club.

It started doing the same thing. Works well then starts to slow down and gets to a point where it doesn’t make ice.

Unplug - let sit a day - and it works again.

Turned out the mechanism where the ice discharges was getting blocked up due to a small leak when new water was pumped in to make ice. The leak caused a spray and over time that spray water iced up and blocked the discharge. The blocked discharge made the machine think it didn’t need to make ice.

Unplugging the machine caused the ice block to melt over time and all would be good until it slowly happened again.

Good luck.

MoKelly
 
   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #5  
Of course you did say "it runs and makes nothing".. So if the compressor is running and the temp inside is below 32 but no cubes are made, then my compressor idea won't hold water. Pun intended.
 
   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #6  
could be any number of things. water pump , water pump relay, etc,etc, Is it new enough to have a circuit board ? Perhaps a relay on the circuit board that controls something else. ie the compressor, etc
 
   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #7  
Turned out the mechanism where the ice discharges was getting blocked up due to a small leak when new water was pumped in to make ice.
MoKelly
Or the sensor or switch that tells machine ice bin is full?
 
   / Ice makers-anyone know them?
  • Thread Starter
#8  
Or the sensor or switch that tells machine ice bin is full?
I don’t *think* there is one. The funny thing about this ice make is the cabinet is insulated, but only refrigerated by the ice and the ice making equipment itself. There’s no “duct” blowing cold air into the ice cube cabinet. The bottom cubes melt off and the water runs out in a tube into a drain.

There IS an ice cube level control knob

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   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #9  
Wow, do some people use that much ice? We've just got a couple old-fashioned ice trays that make all we'll ever need. I've read that icemakers in general are rather troublesome.
I'm thinking K0ua's suggestion is probably the most likely culprit.
 
   / Ice makers-anyone know them? #10  
I think Oaktree is right.🤣 The ice maker in our refrigerator was replaced - again - yesterday, as is done at least once a year. And this time it took the technician a couple of months to get the right part from Sears. So for a couple of months I've been using the old fashioned ice trays and having more ice than we could use.
 
 
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