I had always wondered what the Ice Gnomes got up to in there when I wasn't looking.
On my first attempt, my phone shut down from the cold!
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
not pictured: the sensor that triggers it to drop ice right when my baby is about to fall asleep for a nap
I’ve serviced this unit for years. It’s a clever old design, a sophisticated little analog clockworks that manages a fill valve, a timer, and a heater under the tray to slightly melt the cubes to make it easier for the sweep arm to push out the cubes.
There’s a tiny adjustment screw to set how long the full valve runs (to size the cubes), and a locking arm that lands on the full hopper that stops the whole system.
It is a pretty clever design! Still, I wish I had one capable of filling custom molds, so that I could have skull ice without having to put so much manual labor into it.
Per the link, I put one of these in a chest freezer. It's supplemental, so it's not always on, but whenever I fire it up, I watch the cycle with glee. I am not smart enough to convert this into a skull ice factory, unfortunately.
It’s a 1968 design!! https://patents.google.com/patent/US3362181A/
Previously on Snowpiercer...
I always wondered how the overflow lever of the ice machine doesn't get buried under the ice cubes (cylinder sections). TIL it lifts the bar before dropping the ice.
Part of its job is being buried. It's designed to work with an imperfect system wherein people grab ice from the bin and shuffle it around at literally-random times.
It is normal behavior for the bar to be stuck, whether raising or lowering.
The lever just raises and lowers, one time per cycle. If it gets stuck anywhere, then the process ceases until it becomes un-stuck.
Once it becomes un-stuck, the process tirelessly continues as if nothing ever happened.
(It's a human's job to dig this bar out every now and then, depending on climate and the humans' ice-usage behavior. Sometimes, humans incidentally unstick the bar. Sometimes, it takes a little bit of a deliberate intervention. Sometimes, they incidentally jam things up. Othertimes, the human stares at the ice maker and says "WHY IS THERE NO ICE THAT IS NOT STUCK TOGETHER" and does the primate thing of bashing the ice cubes around until they get some it for their for their drink.
It's only automatic until we get the 200-pound gorillas involved.)
I'm not entirely sure what I'm watching here, but through the headphones it at least sounds like one of those mid-album tracks from a Tool album, that breaks straight into Stinkfist, or something...