Illinois Tool Works Inc.

William Dante Chatelle

Eric K Larson

Juan J Barrena

Mark Edward Brewer

Michael Osvatic

Jarod Michael Sulik

Mark A Romo

Michael K Hintz

Matthew C Webster

Jason L Berry

Jason A Dides

Dharman B Kothari

Michael S Osvatic

An ice making device provides an ice tray and a frame to hold the ice tray. The frame has a proximal end with a motor and a distal end with a circular opening. An insert positioned in the circular opening with a projection provides a vibrating motion to dislodge ice cubes from the ice tray. An ice tray includes an integrated heating circuit for sensing capacitance and releasing frozen ice cubes. An ice tray also includes a raised flange to prevent water from splashing out of the ice tray.

Hybrid ice maker

An ice-tray for ice-making machines is formed by modular fabricated cups that can assembled together within a frame to create an ice-tray of arbitrary dimensions allowing a sharing of components among a variety of ice-tray sizes. Individual cups may include ice formation sensors or heaters or may be heated by an induction heating system.

Smart ice machine with separately fabricated cups for the ice tray

An icemaker employs a thermoformed ice tray that may have preprinted conductors providing for heating elements in capacitive sensing. Capacitive sensing may be used to control a water fill level and/or to detect complete freezing of the ice cubes and/or to detect complete ejection of the ice cubes.

Icemaker with thermoformed ice tray providing heating and phase change sensing

An ice maker is provided that may include cooperating primary and secondary coils arranged on opposite sides of a freezer cabinet wall for wirelessly transmitting electrical power through the freezer cabinet wall to energize various ice maker components. During the wireless electrical power transmission, a data/control signal may be superimposed on the electrical power waveform to allow wireless transmission of the control signal, which can be processed by a logic circuitry for implementing component control methodologies.

Harness free ice maker system

An ice-maker provides a reversible AC motor whose direction is changed at a first and second stop positioning the tray in a filling position and an ice cubes discharging position, respectively. A bail arm may introduce an additional stop preventing discharge of ice when an ice bin is full. User controls may allow the user to set a water fill time based on local water pressure conditions. An ice tray incorporating an ice sensor may releasably connect to the ice-making machine for ready replacement.

Flexing tray ice-maker with AC drive

An ice-maker () provides a weight-sensing ice bin () that provides multiple levels of ice measurement thereby allowing improved control strategies that reduce ice making or ice making rate in accordance with anticipated ice usage to eliminate energy costs and the need to discard stale ice cubes. The weight sensor may be an induction sensor where the coil also serves a heating function for defrosting.

Ice-maker with weight-sensitive ice bin

A lock system for an appliance providing multiple detection switches for lid closure and lid locking encodes the switch states as different voltages on a single signal line to reduce wiring harness costs.

Appliance lock with voltage encoded wiring

A transmission controller for an automatic washing machine incorporates an accelerometer to provide for sophisticated out-of-balance detection. Speed sensing and water moisture sensing may optionally be also incorporated into the transmission controller, the former providing a more sophisticated out-of-balance detection and the latter permitting overflow detection.

Growing community of inventors

Cranston, RI, United States of America

William Dante Chatelle