Frequently Asked Questions About Domestic Refrigerator Repair:
Misc. ice maker questions
Hi, hope you don't mind if I merely insert these responses. There are two types of ice maker heads used with your model. I will assume the most common one which has a white nylon tray that attaches to one side of the head. During a dump cycle the tray rotates around very slowly but at a certain part of the rotation the back side of the tray is momentarily prevented from rotating which causes the tray to twist. The cubes then fall out.
I'd be interested in trying to grasp how the ice maker cycles - clearly the bucket must be there but I can't see any mechanical linkage to prevent the tray rotating if its not.
That's right. The ice maker will still cycle if you remove the tray. The unit will stop however when the tray is full due to the wire arm that hangs into the tray which is part of the on\off switch. During the dump cycle this arm will rise up then down again to position, if it's prevented from going all the way down (and if it's adjusted properly) it should stop the ice dump cycles when the tray is full.
The generation of ice must also be temperature dependant eg it doesn't rotate during a defrost cycle
Yes the timer motor inside the ice maker head only runs when the ice maker is below a certain temperature (I think it's somewhere around -3C), but it will still cycle if the defrost and the dump cycles happen to coincide. There is no electrical interconnection of the defrost circuit to the ice maker head.
How does it sense that the water in the tray is frozen - or does it just wait a preset time and then when other criteria are met it dumps the ice ?
Yes, just a preset time when the temperature is below the required temp. The slow moving motor inside triggers a dump at the same spot each rotation.
From empty it sometimes only makes a couple of trays overnight and on other times it seems to 1/2 fill the bucket and I haven't been able to work it out yet.
No, not to my knowledge. It should work as regular as "clockwork" unless the water pressure to your home is variable. In this case the ice volume would vary but just slightly I would think.
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