An ice machine that wouldn't dispense properly turned out to have a partially blocked water filter, even though it was still within its service interval. The spurting water flow was the clue. Replacing the filter fixed the clumping and restored normal operation.
Welcome to today's OnRamp Technical Review. Today's case study is titled The Ice Machine That Wasn't Broken. I think it serves as a good example of how thorough diagnostics and really digging into how the machine works and understanding what it's supposed to be doing will sometimes lead us to finding out that the machine is actually just trying its best without, or in imperfect or, uh, in ideal conditions. So when I arrived, the reporting complaint was that this ice maker was freezing up. And in fact, the customer's complaint directly was that the ice machine just wasn't working sometimes. Every now and then they'd be able to get some ice out of it, but every— but most of the time they weren't. So when I arrived, I dismantled the front panels and took the lid off of the barrel and found that there was indeed ice in it, but that it was freezing together inside of the storage barrel and preventing normal dispensing. So staff had reported that they needed to manually break apart the ice and In order to restore operation, which of course is not ideal. At the time that I arrived, it was powered on and it was perfectly capable of producing ice. There was no real apparent issue standing out to me right away. There were no faults, no triggers, alarms, nothing was locked out. In fact, it was perfectly operational. At the time that I inspected it. Initially though, I observed that, um, after emptying some of the ice out of the drum and call— forcing the ice machine to call for more ice to be made, um, it actually did run through its freeze and harvest cycle normally. Ice formed on the evaporator, and this is a drum evaporator with an auger, and It released the ice normally and dispensed the ice up into the chute where it fell into the storage bin as normal. This confirmed that the refrigeration system was fine, that there was no problem with the mechanics involved in the harvest or fill, that in fact the machine again appeared to be operating fine. So as I observed water entering the reservoir, I noticed that the water coming out of the nozzle was not just a steady stream. In fact, it was kind of spurting and trickling out irregularly. This condition was definitely not normal. In fact, it indicated to me that we may possibly have had an issue with the The float fill assembly, or possibly a water restriction somewhere downstream. The reservoir on this particular type of ice maker is designed to maintain a stable and constant water level in the reservoir, so that, that way ice can be made in a uniform and consistent manner. So when I went through the machine to diagnose, I found that again the float assembly was looking— that was floating and operating fine. It seemed to be moving without restriction or any type of encumbrance. All indications were that the float mechanism itself was perfectly fine. So Whatever the problem was, that's not where it was originating. Attention was then directed upstream in the water supply system. I noticed an inline water filtration cartridge, and the service date marked on the filter indicated that it was still within its service life. It was about 6 weeks from being due to change, but it still wasn't due. However, After observing the water flow pattern and being absolutely positive that this indicated some kind of a restriction, I removed the filter and replaced it. Following replacement of the water filter, the machine started up, filled perfectly smoothly, and ran normal freeze and harvest without any issues. In fact, the machine operated good as new. And in fact, because the water was not restricted and was coming out smoothly, the ice was made— and the ice basically did not stick together as it had been before, so eliminating the problem of the ice clumping. in the barrel. So normal operation was restored to the machine. In reflecting on the diagnostic process and the problems with this machine, really one thing above all else comes to mind is that the machine was behaving in light of its service interval. In other words, there wasn't anything wrong with the machine. It was trying its best to do its job in spite of the conditions that it was operating in. Thus, the filter, while still within scheduled service life, obviously needed to be replaced. The one thing I want to highlight is that the float assembly was my first area to troubleshoot and to eliminate as a problem source. Had I been younger in my career, I may have replaced that float assembly unnecessarily. So it's important that we make sure that we keep digging deeper, keep asking why until we find the true source of the problem. It wasn't that the water was trickling in irregularly into the reservoir because there was something wrong with it. It was because water was restricted later, further on downstream, and it was responding to that problem. So again, verify the source of a condition before replacing components. The restriction existed upstream. Replacing the water filter was all that was required to restore proper system operation, and this was the lesson that the machine had to teach that day.
