--- title: "Ice machines" description: "U-Line ice machines: 6 ice machines — clear ice, craft clear ice and nugget — and they are a different appliance from a crescent ice maker." url: "https://ulinemiami.support/appliances/ice-machine/" date_modified: "2026-08-29" Appliance type: "Ice machines" --- # U-Line ice machines ### Three machines that all make ice A clear ice machine freezes moving water slowly, so the ice forms without trapped air and comes out dense and transparent. A craft clear machine does the same for a larger, slower cube. A nugget machine freezes a thin layer on the wall of a cylinder and drives an auger through it, producing the soft chewable pellets people buy them for. Same category, completely different machinery, completely different failures. ### What the ice tells you Read it before the machine stops. Clear ice that has gone cloudy, thin or hollow is about water movement, harvest timing or scale. Nugget ice that came out wet, then slushy, then stopped is the auger or the freezing cylinder. In both cases the ice changes first, which makes it the cheapest diagnostic anybody gets. ### The water circuit is the appliance U-Line’s own relay chart for these boards names a water dispense valve, a circulation pump, a water inlet valve, a hot gas valve and a condenser fan — five circuits a refrigerator does not have. The service menu will toggle each of them individually, which turns a guess into a test, and it is the reason a diagnosis on one of these machines is worth doing properly rather than by replacing parts. ### Scale, and why six months is optimistic here The machine asks for a cleaning cycle after six cumulative months of ice making. That interval assumes ordinary water. South Florida does not supply ordinary water, and a machine that visibly scales between cycles wants a filter as well as a schedule. Scale narrows every water path at once, which is why a machine that has never been descaled tends to fail in several places in the same season. ### What to have ready when you call The model number from the plate on the upper right or the rear wall inside, what the appliance is doing rather than what you think has failed, whether it is built into a run or standing in a gap, and anything showing on the display — photographed rather than described. On this make the display shows very little, so what you can see is worth more than usual. 6 models · clear ice, craft ice and nugget Ice machine repair Clear, craft and nugget — three different machines The ice itself is evidence before anything fails Scale is what ends them in this climate Three machines that all make ice A clear ice machine freezes moving water slowly, so the ice forms without trapped air and comes out dense and transparent. A craft clear machine does the same for a larger, slower cube. A nugget machine freezes a thin layer on the wall of a cylinder and drives an auger through it, producing the soft chewable pellets people buy them for. Same category, completely different machinery, completely different failures. What the ice tells you Read it before the machine stops. Clear ice that has gone cloudy, thin or hollow is about water movement, harvest timing or scale. Nugget ice that came out wet, then slushy, then stopped is the auger or the freezing cylinder. In both cases the ice changes first, which makes it the cheapest diagnostic anybody gets. The water circuit is the appliance U-Line’s own relay chart for these boards names a water dispense valve, a circulation pump, a water inlet valve, a hot gas valve and a condenser fan — five circuits a refrigerator does not have. The service menu will toggle each of them individually, which turns a guess into a test, and it is the reason a diagnosis on one of these machines is worth doing properly rather than by replacing parts. Scale, and why six months is optimistic here The machine asks for a cleaning cycle after six cumulative months of ice making. That interval assumes ordinary water. South Florida does not supply ordinary water, and a machine that visibly scales between cycles wants a filter as well as a schedule. Scale narrows every water path at once, which is why a machine that has never been descaled tends to fail in several places in the same season. What to have ready when you call The model number from the plate on the upper right or the rear wall inside, what the appliance is doing rather than what you think has failed, whether it is built into a run or standing in a gap, and anything showing on the display — photographed rather than described. On this make the display shows very little, so what you can see is worth more than usual. ### My display is flashing 11, or 12, or 13. What is that? Those are real and the maker prints them. Eleven is the water level in the tray or reservoir reading high, twelve is the water level reading low, and thirteen is an auger error on a nugget machine. U-Line writes them in its manuals as E11, E12 and E13 and notes that they are displayed as bare numbers, which is exactly why searching for them as error codes finds so little. Worth one honest caveat: they sit on the control board's list, and no model's own service menu in the forty-four manuals we read claims them — so whether one can reach your machine depends on whether your machine has the part. ### The ice has gone cloudy. That is the machine telling you something before it stops, and it is the cheapest moment to act. Clear ice is made by freezing water that is moving; cloudy, thin or hollow ice means the movement, the harvest timing or the water itself has changed. Usually scale, sometimes the circulation pump. ### It is making a grinding noise. On a nugget machine, switch it off. Nugget ice is made by an auger — a driven screw inside a freezing cylinder — and a motor pushing against a seized auger is destroying the gearbox behind it while you decide. This is the one appliance on this site where the first instruction is to stop using it. ### Three lamps are flickering at me. That is the cleaning signal, not a failure. After six cumulative months of ice making, the ice, no water and drain lamps each flicker twice in turn, and they keep doing it until the cleaning cycle is run. The maker is explicit that only its own ice machine cleaner may be used, and on a nugget machine that warning is worth taking literally — the wrong chemical reaches the auger and the evaporator. --- **[Read full article: Ice machines](https://ulinemiami.support/appliances/ice-machine/)**