I would suggest that you get a set of tap wrenches, both metric and SAE, to clean interior threads. A thread gauge would help, as well. Overall, I think this was a masterful repair. The stainless steel fasteners will reduce the corrosion, but I think that there should be a gasket or plastic spacer between the two halves of the extruder.
Hi Adrian, greetings from Louisville, KY. Just a little info, First Build is a partnership between the University of Louisville's Speed School of Engineering and GE Appliances. They are maker space that helps to launch real world products while letting aspiring engineers learn and create. Their newest and most celebrated item that I'm aware of is the GE Indoor Smoker developed with the help of a local chef. Just a little bit of an interesting backstory on that for ya!
A suggestion for engineering students - don't cheap-out on critical process components like fasteners and don't let manufacturers wear you down by splitting hairs on the cost of small parts. If anything, use plastic or enameled steel for the case instead of stainless. That's what GE or any other company would do for mass production on a 'new' appliance. Get rid of anything 'connected' except power and water. Too much tech isn't necessary for small appliances and it's one more thing to fail and ends up costing too much to replace/repair. I wish car makers would realize this.
I work on the larger versions of these. Sonic has the same type of "nugget" ice and uses scotsman ice machines that use the same basic design. Yes, everything attached to the evaporator should be high grade stainless steel or plastic. Anything else will rust in the wet environment. Sonics ice machines run almost 24/7 and i grease the top bearing/bushing twice a year with food grade grease. The maintenance helps everything to last longer. The evaporators are fun to replace. 😮 the drain hoses you referenced are for draining the unit during cleaning. At least thats what they're for in the scotsman units. You have to descale and clean the unit 2 or 3 times a year. Also the fan you mentioned near the end is for the condenser. The evaporator is the part you worked on.
As an owner of a used Opal ice maker and an HVAC/R tech I can give some pointers on this. 1 with every ice machine you should at least every 6 months perform a descaling on the machine. Yours I would say do a heavy descaling. Go to Lowes and get their cleaning vinegar and it will loosen all the scale from the insides and make a royal mess that you will have to flush out. 2 The outside part that has the fan on it is a condenser. That is where the hot refrigerant goes through to change from a gas to a liquid. 3 The ice drum as we call it in flakers is the evaporator. This machine is a flaker with a die to force the ice through to make pellets. 4 I have a spare evaporator that still has the plastic chute on it. No they did not update the screws in the spare that I have. If you need a part I can make it available to you Adrian. Past all these points you did a good job on the repair. They do make an external water tank for these so that you can see how much water is left. The app does not do much except to give a schedule to run and see what the machine is doing.
I had never considered that chilling water like this could cause hard water deposits to precipitate out; I had mostly thought of it in the context of boiling hard water and reducing its volume, but I guess it also makes sense that the solubility goes down when the water simply gets cold too. What a nasty cost-reduced construction for what's certainly advertised and sold as a "premium" product. Stainless steel fasteners would have cost them less than a dollar at scale, and a better bushing design (either a better bearing or something isolated from the water path through a seal) would have probably been five bucks or less. Pretty sad on something that costs in the high hundreds of dollars.
When doing work on water-based appliances, I put it in a paddling pool to test. A dish draining tray with an outlet would be a handy tool if you're doing more of this stuff.
With all the moisture condensation and temperature involved it might've been dissimilar metal issue as well. I don't know if Noalox Anti-Oxidant is food safe so the silicone grease is probably the better way to go. there's an electrician that uses it on all external screws that way they're removable in the future.
I have the Opal 2.0 and we love it! When we first considered purchasing one, we were having a hard time deciding if we wanted to spend the extra money on the side tank. Thank god we did! We use far more ice now than we ever imagined therefor would forever be filling the reservoir. With the side tank we can go a few days between fills. BTW I was super excited when I saw Adrian's DB cover (ie: repair) the Opal ice maker.
the Opal 2.0 is pretty good, I still have a 1.0 that worked great until we got the newer model (although we modified the 1.0 with more insulation for parts and a cooling fan, made it work far better than before).
It's weird that my husband and I were just Wednesday talking about getting one of this type of machine since my mother constantly uses all the ice. Then both BigClive and you both upload videos about malfunctioning ones.
There's tons of countertop ice makers available for black Friday for around fifty bucks. You could buy 8 for less than the cost of one of these making it much lower risk. I got one last week and love it.
Thanks for this, I have 6 of these I found thrown away and this should be the fix for them. I cleaned one up but it would run and make a bit of ice then stall the motor. Didnt know that chamber came apart
Good repair! I would have used a bit of that grease at the interface between the metal halves to (slightly) prevent rust. Distilled water should be fine for most that are not chugging a bucket of ice with each meal. They do use those screws also on automatic coffee machines, in wet areas. All this just to save a few cents. Getting that bushing measured would have been nice, so you can make it, buy it or print it without paying extra. Hopefully it's teflon or a high-density plastic.
Not the usual fare but still throughly fascinating! I'm not a fan of these devices, especially ones that are integrated into refridgerators, for all the reasons shown in this video. They get gungy, they break, and are generally more trouble than they're worth. I use old fashioned ice trays to make ice. Nice big cubes every time with only a minor effort.
If he could use a caliper and give inner and outer diameters, and the length, it's just a block of Teflon that we could drill/lathe out. The problem is you need those exact measurements.
I guess they couldn't use a bronze bushing because of thermal contraction? Or judging by the rusty hardware, maybe bronze would just eat into their profit margins too much.
Hex head screws are going to be much worse than Phillips head if they rust again. Much less material needs to be lost before the driver surface turns fully round.
The technical term for this kind of ice is "Extruded Ice". The consept is it squeezes the water out of the ice making the pellets harder and conserving water use in manufacturing the ice. Water has to have some hardness to freeze. Never use softwater for an ice machine or beverages. The scale and buildup in an ice machine is pretty much a fact of life. I have opened the cabinets on commercial units and found some really sickening sights. Stainless is expensive so im guessing whoever designed this thing kept cost down. It pretty much looks disposable to me.
I work at a university chemistry department, and we have ice machines all over the place in the labs. They all use deionized water. Whatever traces of hardness that remain after the resin-exchange deionizing are clearly sufficient to allow the ice to freeze just fine.
Hey adrian just a heads up. I used to swap rusty non-stainless screws on my dirtbike carbs all the time. But a few years back I was in Mexico on a dual sport motorcycle and I had to do a carb clean on the side of the road in the desert. But after remocing the carbourator to clean it I was amazed. The stainless steel fasteners I replaced had fused to the keinlin carb body! Holy hell. Dissimilar metals will sometimes do this. There might be a reason to not mix stainless steel fasteners in place of manufacturer's choice. Maybe they function as a sacraficial anode?
I had one of those units. (the same model) and it did the exact same thing. I did almost the same thing as you did. I tore it down, cleaned it, and put a bushing in. worked for another year. then i bought a fridge with an ice maker built in. I gave the Opal to a friend. he used it for 6 months and ditched it for whatever reason.
@@adriansdigitalbasement Hi Adrian! yeah it had that crud. Right before i gave it to my friend i tore it down and cleaned it once more. there was mild rust in there in the same places and some calcium build up in the same places as well. the bushing was fine this time though. If they used stainless it would have been better for the machine during manufacturing in my opinion.
Next video on this should modding or removing the Bluetooth and adding a rs232 port so it can send messages to the zif 64 in the basement via a serial link. "ice is ready"
We have German industrial humidifiers at work. Everything near water is stainless steel. Due to the application, they're not cost reduced, but a single pump is $8000 new ($3500 to rebuild, which has to be done annually for near 100% uptime). Imagine this "expensive" ice maker costing an order of magnitude more expensive. Nobody would buy it. An annual teardown would probably help both the reliability and cleanliness. In contrast, we have some Chinese "industrial" quality (more like commerical quality at best) humidifiers that cost about $500 each, but at this price point, we get painted sheet metal tanks and nickel plated ultrasonic atomizers that look rough after being submerged in softened & UV sterilized RO water for a few months of 24/7 operation. Cost-reduced for sure, but where it counts like the industrial looking exterior, terrible build quality, cheap parts, etc., but gets the job done and lasts a few years before they're cheaper to replace than repair. Kinda the difference between cheap consumer and business-oriented laptops (Dell Inspiron vs Latitude, Lenovo anything vs. ThinkBook)... They're not flashy nor have the latest/best features, but they're built to last a few years when you don't need a Toughbook
I have an ice tray somewhere at the back of the freezer. It had a Brussel sprout stuck to it last time I noticed it. There's not much call for ice round our way
I just bought a countertop ice maker for $53 from wally world online and I love it. If I get a year out of it it was worth it. This model is too fancy for its own good. Bluetooth... Seriously?
OMFG... I used to own one of those pieces of excrement. Totally NOT designed for any real maintenance. The one I had the motor that pushes the ice out would ALWAYS start SCREAMING, literally SCREAMING. No matter how much you cleaned it, no matter what you cleaned it with that expletive motor would always make that noise. The BEST you can do is occasionally oil the motor, but you have to COMPLETELY disassemble it to get to it. They were originally priced at over SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. This is the bullshit that GE produces, they don't deserve to be in business AT ALL, and pretty much EVERY GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING other GE appliance I've owned the past two decades has been ABSOLUTE GARBAGE and INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED to be as UNSERVICABLE as possible!
20 freakin dollars for as plastic bushing! c'mon! holy crap is that expensive. Digital Basement.... why dont you just 3d print your own? use some lithium grease and call it a day; now that you know. christ sakes man. that opal ice maker is like the one i had before the newer GE one i have now. the last one was thrown out because someone put rubbing alcohol in the reservoir and it made "tangy" ice we shall say, all it needed was a good flushing and it would have been good after a full cycle.....
I did not even watch the full video, yet but why wouldnt a plastic piece that is wet not make black sludge. Ever see inside a commercial ice machine that does not make black sludge when not taken care of and cleaned ? Mold and bacteria all over.
Using distilled water is not recommended for edibles. Because it contains almost no ions it sucks potassium ions from your body. These potassium ions are required for nerve cells to work properly, so distilled water can numb the nerves of your mouth and esophagus temporary and gives your strange feelings or even more serious problems. Drinking a larger amount of it could be deadly. Especially in frozen form there could be local high concentration of distilled water.
Looks like an Ace, Do It Best, or True Value. All three have a section like that. The end cap signs don't look like Ace, but the updated TrueValue stores or a DoIt Best (which we haven't had in our area for two decades.)
Hell yeah, Adrian's Digital Kitchen!!!
I would suggest that you get a set of tap wrenches, both metric and SAE, to clean interior threads. A thread gauge would help, as well. Overall, I think this was a masterful repair. The stainless steel fasteners will reduce the corrosion, but I think that there should be a gasket or plastic spacer between the two halves of the extruder.
Two CRT cameos… just incase you were wondering if this was really one of Adrian’s videos
And a Scepter warranty card....
I LOVE having rust and microplastics in my ice, don't you?
yeh, just don't ever look at HVAC videos of fast food chain ice maker machine maintenance
Hi Adrian, greetings from Louisville, KY. Just a little info, First Build is a partnership between the University of Louisville's Speed School of Engineering and GE Appliances. They are maker space that helps to launch real world products while letting aspiring engineers learn and create. Their newest and most celebrated item that I'm aware of is the GE Indoor Smoker developed with the help of a local chef. Just a little bit of an interesting backstory on that for ya!
A suggestion for engineering students - don't cheap-out on critical process components like fasteners and don't let manufacturers wear you down by splitting hairs on the cost of small parts. If anything, use plastic or enameled steel for the case instead of stainless. That's what GE or any other company would do for mass production on a 'new' appliance. Get rid of anything 'connected' except power and water. Too much tech isn't necessary for small appliances and it's one more thing to fail and ends up costing too much to replace/repair. I wish car makers would realize this.
I work on the larger versions of these. Sonic has the same type of "nugget" ice and uses scotsman ice machines that use the same basic design. Yes, everything attached to the evaporator should be high grade stainless steel or plastic. Anything else will rust in the wet environment. Sonics ice machines run almost 24/7 and i grease the top bearing/bushing twice a year with food grade grease. The maintenance helps everything to last longer. The evaporators are fun to replace. 😮 the drain hoses you referenced are for draining the unit during cleaning. At least thats what they're for in the scotsman units. You have to descale and clean the unit 2 or 3 times a year. Also the fan you mentioned near the end is for the condenser. The evaporator is the part you worked on.
As an owner of a used Opal ice maker and an HVAC/R tech I can give some pointers on this. 1 with every ice machine you should at least every 6 months perform a descaling on the machine. Yours I would say do a heavy descaling. Go to Lowes and get their cleaning vinegar and it will loosen all the scale from the insides and make a royal mess that you will have to flush out. 2 The outside part that has the fan on it is a condenser. That is where the hot refrigerant goes through to change from a gas to a liquid. 3 The ice drum as we call it in flakers is the evaporator. This machine is a flaker with a die to force the ice through to make pellets. 4 I have a spare evaporator that still has the plastic chute on it. No they did not update the screws in the spare that I have. If you need a part I can make it available to you Adrian. Past all these points you did a good job on the repair. They do make an external water tank for these so that you can see how much water is left. The app does not do much except to give a schedule to run and see what the machine is doing.
I had never considered that chilling water like this could cause hard water deposits to precipitate out; I had mostly thought of it in the context of boiling hard water and reducing its volume, but I guess it also makes sense that the solubility goes down when the water simply gets cold too. What a nasty cost-reduced construction for what's certainly advertised and sold as a "premium" product. Stainless steel fasteners would have cost them less than a dollar at scale, and a better bushing design (either a better bearing or something isolated from the water path through a seal) would have probably been five bucks or less. Pretty sad on something that costs in the high hundreds of dollars.
Lubrication of stainless steel bolts is actually required. Because they tend to seize whilst being tightened very easily.
When doing work on water-based appliances, I put it in a paddling pool to test. A dish draining tray with an outlet would be a handy tool if you're doing more of this stuff.
With all the moisture condensation and temperature involved it might've been dissimilar metal issue as well. I don't know if Noalox Anti-Oxidant is food safe so the silicone grease is probably the better way to go. there's an electrician that uses it on all external screws that way they're removable in the future.
I wonder, there must be another bushing at the bottom? What a cheap bushing, on an expensive mechanism.
I have the Opal 2.0 and we love it! When we first considered purchasing one, we were having a hard time deciding if we wanted to spend the extra money on the side tank. Thank god we did! We use far more ice now than we ever imagined therefor would forever be filling the reservoir. With the side tank we can go a few days between fills. BTW I was super excited when I saw Adrian's DB cover (ie: repair) the Opal ice maker.
the Opal 2.0 is pretty good, I still have a 1.0 that worked great until we got the newer model (although we modified the 1.0 with more insulation for parts and a cooling fan, made it work far better than before).
It's weird that my husband and I were just Wednesday talking about getting one of this type of machine since my mother constantly uses all the ice. Then both BigClive and you both upload videos about malfunctioning ones.
Heh, I did a double-take when I saw this video come up because I also just watched Clive's video.
There's tons of countertop ice makers available for black Friday for around fifty bucks. You could buy 8 for less than the cost of one of these making it much lower risk. I got one last week and love it.
Nice Job Adrian I have noticed a lot companies going cheap on the hardware and luckly you have great hardware store !
Thanks for this, I have 6 of these I found thrown away and this should be the fix for them. I cleaned one up but it would run and make a bit of ice then stall the motor. Didnt know that chamber came apart
Every household should have a stock pile of various m3 and m4 screws... they're used in every appliance.
Put a little anti-seize on those bolts when you put it back together. You could probably use a dab of Vaseline, as well.
Good repair! I would have used a bit of that grease at the interface between the metal halves to (slightly) prevent rust. Distilled water should be fine for most that are not chugging a bucket of ice with each meal. They do use those screws also on automatic coffee machines, in wet areas. All this just to save a few cents. Getting that bushing measured would have been nice, so you can make it, buy it or print it without paying extra. Hopefully it's teflon or a high-density plastic.
Not the usual fare but still throughly fascinating!
I'm not a fan of these devices, especially ones that are integrated into refridgerators, for all the reasons shown in this video. They get gungy, they break, and are generally more trouble than they're worth. I use old fashioned ice trays to make ice. Nice big cubes every time with only a minor effort.
Congrats. I'm amazed you could even GET the bushing.
If he could use a caliper and give inner and outer diameters, and the length, it's just a block of Teflon that we could drill/lathe out. The problem is you need those exact measurements.
I guess they couldn't use a bronze bushing because of thermal contraction? Or judging by the rusty hardware, maybe bronze would just eat into their profit margins too much.
Yeah good question ... Or what about a ball bearing type? Sounds like it would cost $5 more than they were willing to spend.
Hex head screws are going to be much worse than Phillips head if they rust again. Much less material needs to be lost before the driver surface turns fully round.
My Mate Adrian! (Reference to the channel My Mate Vince who fixes random items)
The technical term for this kind of ice is "Extruded Ice". The consept is it squeezes the water out of the ice making the pellets harder and conserving water use in manufacturing the ice. Water has to have some hardness to freeze. Never use softwater for an ice machine or beverages. The scale and buildup in an ice machine is pretty much a fact of life. I have opened the cabinets on commercial units and found some really sickening sights. Stainless is expensive so im guessing whoever designed this thing kept cost down. It pretty much looks disposable to me.
I work at a university chemistry department, and we have ice machines all over the place in the labs. They all use deionized water. Whatever traces of hardness that remain after the resin-exchange deionizing are clearly sufficient to allow the ice to freeze just fine.
I had that GE Black and white TV in my parents kitchen growing up! I want one of those ice makers, I have the other kind that.
Wait, is this Adrian's 2nd 2nd channel? :) I'm not watching Technology Connextras here? Who knew.
Whoa! A basements extra and a new "Adrian's Digital Dong" (OF)! November is getting busy.
Hey adrian just a heads up. I used to swap rusty non-stainless screws on my dirtbike carbs all the time. But a few years back I was in Mexico on a dual sport motorcycle and I had to do a carb clean on the side of the road in the desert. But after remocing the carbourator to clean it I was amazed. The stainless steel fasteners I replaced had fused to the keinlin carb body! Holy hell. Dissimilar metals will sometimes do this. There might be a reason to not mix stainless steel fasteners in place of manufacturer's choice. Maybe they function as a sacraficial anode?
stainless steel has a tendency to gall when screwed into most metals. AVE has a good video about it. using an anti-seize whill prevent it
I had one of those units. (the same model) and it did the exact same thing. I did almost the same thing as you did. I tore it down, cleaned it, and put a bushing in. worked for another year. then i bought a fridge with an ice maker built in. I gave the Opal to a friend. he used it for 6 months and ditched it for whatever reason.
Ah so it didn't break again after changing the bushing? Did yours have the same issue with the rust and then the crap around where the bushing was?
@@adriansdigitalbasement Hi Adrian! yeah it had that crud. Right before i gave it to my friend i tore it down and cleaned it once more. there was mild rust in there in the same places and some calcium build up in the same places as well. the bushing was fine this time though. If they used stainless it would have been better for the machine during manufacturing in my opinion.
Next video on this should modding or removing the Bluetooth and adding a rs232 port so it can send messages to the zif 64 in the basement via a serial link. "ice is ready"
Sorry you had to deal with this cost-reduced, crappy product design. At least we all got to see the insides of it.
We have German industrial humidifiers at work. Everything near water is stainless steel. Due to the application, they're not cost reduced, but a single pump is $8000 new ($3500 to rebuild, which has to be done annually for near 100% uptime). Imagine this "expensive" ice maker costing an order of magnitude more expensive. Nobody would buy it. An annual teardown would probably help both the reliability and cleanliness.
In contrast, we have some Chinese "industrial" quality (more like commerical quality at best) humidifiers that cost about $500 each, but at this price point, we get painted sheet metal tanks and nickel plated ultrasonic atomizers that look rough after being submerged in softened & UV sterilized RO water for a few months of 24/7 operation. Cost-reduced for sure, but where it counts like the industrial looking exterior, terrible build quality, cheap parts, etc., but gets the job done and lasts a few years before they're cheaper to replace than repair.
Kinda the difference between cheap consumer and business-oriented laptops (Dell Inspiron vs Latitude, Lenovo anything vs. ThinkBook)... They're not flashy nor have the latest/best features, but they're built to last a few years when you don't need a Toughbook
I have an ice tray somewhere at the back of the freezer. It had a Brussel sprout stuck to it last time I noticed it.
There's not much call for ice round our way
man, that's some old school Adrian! haha :D
Hi Adrian
What is that led light with carbine hook you was using in the video?
ooooh I didn't know about this channel!
I was considering buying one of these for my wife for Christmas. Thanks for talking me out of it. 😂
I just bought a countertop ice maker for $53 from wally world online and I love it. If I get a year out of it it was worth it. This model is too fancy for its own good. Bluetooth... Seriously?
One channel per room of your house ?😀
Not sure I'd use that even after the fix.
Did you replace those screws with stainless ones?
I'm super confused: where's the ogre?
OMFG... I used to own one of those pieces of excrement. Totally NOT designed for any real maintenance.
The one I had the motor that pushes the ice out would ALWAYS start SCREAMING, literally SCREAMING.
No matter how much you cleaned it, no matter what you cleaned it with that expletive motor would always make that noise. The BEST you can do is occasionally oil the motor, but you have to COMPLETELY disassemble it to get to it.
They were originally priced at over SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS.
This is the bullshit that GE produces, they don't deserve to be in business AT ALL, and pretty much EVERY GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING other GE appliance I've owned the past two decades has been ABSOLUTE GARBAGE and INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED to be as UNSERVICABLE as possible!
Third channel is back!
that hardware store looks very portland
ps: try to make it to the Montage sometime if you haven't been its like my fav place to go when I visit portland.
Great video, thank you for that.
"kinda cool" That is the idea, yes
Never seen prettier ice, lol
ELI the ICE man.
Adrian's Analog Kitchen
Stainless steel screws would be required
Welcome to Adrians Repair Kitchen ! And finally, it works !!! Ir frickin' works !!!
Perfect timing, now you're ready for winter! 🤣
Your wife lets you in the kitchen? And why haven't you introduced us to her?
You mean husband instead of wife.
20 freakin dollars for as plastic bushing! c'mon! holy crap is that expensive. Digital Basement.... why dont you just 3d print your own? use some lithium grease and call it a day; now that you know. christ sakes man. that opal ice maker is like the one i had before the newer GE one i have now. the last one was thrown out because someone put rubbing alcohol in the reservoir and it made "tangy" ice we shall say, all it needed was a good flushing and it would have been good after a full cycle.....
I did not even watch the full video, yet but why wouldnt a plastic piece that is wet not make black sludge. Ever see inside a commercial ice machine that does not make black sludge when not taken care of and cleaned ? Mold and bacteria all over.
You are touching someones old moldy machine and the dead bacteria.
That's why this has a UV system to sterilize the water as it circulates.
@@adriansdigitalbasementextras Am I getting uh moment. ha , got me. :)
Ha or did you.
but reallty buy a new ice machine.
Simple ice trays are superior to this junk for many reasons. This is juicero level bad.
Why does an ice maker need fkn bluetooth. Thats stupid.
There are fryers connecting to Alexa...
Using distilled water is not recommended for edibles. Because it contains almost no ions it sucks potassium ions from your body. These potassium ions are required for nerve cells to work properly, so distilled water can numb the nerves of your mouth and esophagus temporary and gives your strange feelings or even more serious problems. Drinking a larger amount of it could be deadly. Especially in frozen form there could be local high concentration of distilled water.
This is completely false.
This has been widely proven wrong. You get plenty of the ions your body needs from other places.
What hardware store is that? None of the hardware stores near me have a metric selection 10% as good. I usually end up ordering for McMaster Carr 🫠
Looks like an Ace, Do It Best, or True Value. All three have a section like that. The end cap signs don't look like Ace, but the updated TrueValue stores or a DoIt Best (which we haven't had in our area for two decades.)
Next challenge: Run 'DOOM' on that thing. 🧊🙂👋
I mean, it's already got Bluetooth to connect a controller...