I have this small Dometic portable ice maker which does not make ice on all the ice making fingers.
The way this ice maker works is, it pumps water up into a shallow tub that has metal fingers sticking down into the tub. The compressor turns on running the Freon through the tubing and the fingers that stick down into the water. The Freon chills the fingers so that ice forms on the fingers. After a certain amount of time, about 8 minutes or so, the water drains out of the tub and the cooling part reverses into a heat pump for long enough to make the ice drop off of the fingers. Then a mechanism pushed the ice out into a bin. Kind of a neat little operation. When it was new it made about 10 pounds 4-6 pounds of ice in about 1.5-2 hours hours. (on edit corrected the amount of ice it makes)
The problem is, a while back (last spring), the rear set of fingers (there are two rows of fingers) only had a small amount of ice on the fingers when the dump cycle started. The front set of fingers look like they have the normal amount of ice on them. As time progressed the rear fingers have less and less ice on them. The ice making cycle time has not changed from when it was new.
The compressor runs and sounds normal. The condenser fins are not blocked or dirty. The cooling fan runs normally.
QUESTION: Would this indicate low Freon? Or what could be the cause. Any suggestions on where to go get it fixed.
I called the Dometic 1-800 number for service and the recording gave me a couple of RV dealers to go to (Camping World). I seriously doubt RV dealers have the capability to work on a tiny appliance like this.
I really like this ice maker. It doesn't use much electric so I use it while boondocking.