Unusual Ice Makers
Andy and others I have a collection of early IMs. The only conveyor belt style IM I ever saw in a home ref was the first Frigidaire Automatic IM, FD called it AIS for automatic ice service.
This Westinghouse IM was built by WH, I only ever saw one that was working [ in fact the the Lady that owned it said it would not shut off and she had had to throw away a whole bucket of ice every morning or the whole freezer would start to fill with ice cubes, LOL ] I would love to get my hands on the water valve in that WH refrigerator as my WH IM is missing the inlet valve and it is very unique as it exactly measures the water for each ice cube as it fills just one cube at a time. WH did not make this IM long and they sold a kit to install a WP IM to replace it when it broke, WH continued to use WP IMs thereafter in all their refrigerators.
GEs frist IM was a semiautomatic one that only filled the ice tray automatically, the user had to then flip it over to eject the cubes when they were frozen.
I also work on a lot of IMs every week, IMs and gas stoves are about the most troublesome home appliances. It is often fun to fix IMs because you really have to figure out the problem and make a repair from the symptoms but you can not stay around long enough and watch water freeze to see if it really works.