GE Opal Rebuild Saga - Fix Leaking, Screeching, Scaling, and More!

I obtained a GE Opal Profile 1.0 Nugget Ice Machine on OfferUp. It was a package deal that included an all-in-one coffee machine. Two $400 machines for $50 was too good to pass up. After filling and rinsing, I found out why they wanted to be rid of it: it sounded like a wailing banshee! There was also a grinding noise. And it leaked. What had I gotten myself into?

I’m hoping what I learned will help you keep yours running too. Be sure to reach out if you have any questions or comments: dan@danlearnsstuff.com

Models

The pictures in this thread refer to what is colloquially known as Opal 1.0. It is listed on the back as OPAL01GEPSS. It has a 9-hole Cap where the ice exits the auger channel.

 

A 2.0 model has a broadly similar construction and disassembly procedure, but it may require different tools and parts than what is listed here.

Problems

Below are the types of issues that I have personally fixed on my machine:

• Have a fast leak? If it can’t hold water at all, replacing the auger seal will stop the worst leaks.
• Does it screech or whine after water has begun to freeze? Replacing the bottom seal will help this.
  
• Does it screech or whine immediately after starting, but it goes away once it gets cold? Replacing the upper auger bushing will help.
• Have white particles in your ice? Do you use tap or filtered water? Descaling will help. Switching to distilled or Reverse Osmosis water will extend the life of your machine greatly.
• Have black particles or sludge that are not mold? Replacing the upper auger bushing will help too.
• Have black particles that may be mold? A chlorine wash will help.
  

This page captures images and step by step directions for fixing the above auger-related issues. They are mostly centered within the auger chamber itself, but disassembly instructions can help you diagnose and treat a variety of problems. There are other tutorials online that can help you swap the drain lines and diagnose fan and pump problems that are separate from auger wear and tear.

Parts

Throughout this guide, I refer to replaceable parts that can wear down over time and can be replaced using various sources online. Most commodity parts and supplies can be found on Amazon. Some were specially engineered for this machine, and the community has people that are machining replacements you can purchase to keep our babies running well past their original lifetimes.

• 3/4” Auger Seal
• Auger Bushing
• H1 Food-safe Grease
• Distilled White Vinegar
• Ice Machine Cleaner

Disassembly for Auger Maintenance

 Getting into the auger is a bit more difficult than the water pump and other areas. You'll need the following tools:

• Phillips head screwdriver (with long shaft for deeply inset screws)
• Electric screwdriver with phillips head bit for lots of tiny screws
• Spudger or pry-tool
• 10mm deep socket with extension

To help clean out the auger shaft and reseat auger seals, you may also need:

• Long flat-head screwdriver
  
• Large and long socket extension tool
• Long hooked pick or long and narrow needle-nose pliers

Start by UNPLUGGING THE UNIT. I cannot stress this enough. Make sure it is not plugged in before starting!

Then, drain the unit completely. No water should remain.

You can now begin to tear into the unit by removing the top lid.  4 screws hide under rubber caps. A spudger or sharp steak knife can help remove them. Beware: If they hit the counter, they will bounce everywhere.

Disconnect the wi-fi card cable that hides right under the lid.

Remove all screws from the back panel. Move the drain hoses off the panel, and set the entire panel aside.

Remove the screws from the side panels. This is to expose the screws holding the upper tank to the chassis, and to give you more room to maneuver things. You don’t need to completely remove the surround from the chassis! Just shift it up and out of the groove in the base. Careful! It’s got sharp edges!

Unscrew the upper tank from the chassis.

Unscrew the other two interior screws for the upper tank, pictured here.

This transparent cap is held on by 3 screws and weather-stripping-like insulated moulding. Carefully remove the moulding and unscrew the cap.

Having unscrewed the upper water tank in a previous step, shift it off the black chute. It doesn’t have to move very far.

Unscrew the black chute. You will need a skinny long handled Phillips. The screws may be rusty, so be careful they don’t get stripped. There are two inside screws at the tail of the chute as well.

After the black chute is removed, this styrofoam cap can be removed as well. Carefully wiggle it free. To free up space, you can move the water tank farther away. It might also help to unplug the connectors for the front panel and fullness sensor (black and white, squeeze to separate). Remember to reconnect them!

You have successfully revealed the auger body! A 10mm socket will remove the 4 cap screws. As you loosen them, the cap may spring up. They keep tension on the seal spring.

The auger cap will pull straight up revealing the auger chamber. You can see the white bushing nestled inside the cap.

Using a cloth to help get purchase on the auger shaft, lift the auger straight up and out. It should come up with the spring part of the seal.

And now you can see directly to the bottom of the auger chamber. The seal rests on the bottom between the metal body and the ceramic ring/bushing. NOTE: This picture shows the auger seal seated incorrectly!

Congratulations! You have disassembled your ice maker.

General Maintenance: Descale and Sanitize

If you don't use distilled water or that from a reverse osmosis unit, descaling monthly will keep your unit in tip-top shape.

Clean-out and Regrease

While you have it open, take a moment to check other parts that can get gunked up.

• If your machine is whining, the auger is being eroded and scraped off in the chamber. This can lead the upper and lower tanks getting a dark sediment. Wipe  it out and rinse.
• Check the lines for white sediment. The descaling process can knock these loose, but the pump won’t be able to move it into the tank. You can detach and rinse these pipes as well.
• If you have lots of scale, it may be faster to chip it off with a brass tool. Just don’t scratch the surface of your parts by using anything harder than that.
• Vacuum off fans and grilles to keep your cooling system in top shape.
• Look for leaks and calcium deposits. These are harbingers of bigger problems.

Replace the Auger Seal

A grinding that goes away until the machine cools down or fast leaks from below the chamber through the gear case are most likely due to a bad seal at the bottom of the auger. This multi-part pump seal keeps water in the chamber, and it has rubber, ceramic, and metal parts. It is way over-built for this application, but you need to handle the parts carefully. Order matters, and cleanliness matters.

The ceramic ring sits within the round rubber seal. The other half is a metal seat, spring, and rubber seal. The seat fits on the auger shaft against the helix. The rubber seal on the spring fits against the ceramic ring when properly fit into the chamber. The ceramic is sensitive to oils on your skin. It can degrade faster and affect the seals. Clean it with isopropyl alcohol if you touch it. The rubber seals can use a tiny bit of H1 food-safe grease to help seat them properly.

To replace the pump seal, pull the auger and then use a dental scraper or hooked tool to remove the bottom seal and ceramic ring. Seat the new sitting seal on the auger with the rubber towards the socket.

It can be difficult to seat the new bottom seal in the bottom of the chamber without touching the ceramic. Slip it around a long screwdriver or socket extension, sit the tip of the tool onto the crank, and drop the seal into place. Clean off the tool and press the ceramic down into the crank cavity. If this doesn’t seat well, it will leak immediately and vigorously once you seal it back up. Note: The picture below is wrong! The seal is on the wrong side from the ring! If you have better pictures, please send them my way.

When you reset the auger, ensure the spring is not stuck in its compressed state. It will have some bounce when you put the cap back on.

Replace the Bushing

Is there an unholy banshee haunting your machine? The tell-tale wail is probably the bushing at the top of the auger. It keeps the auger centered in the chamber, but it wears down over time. This leaves the auger to scrape against the sides of the chamber. This causes black sludge and a gradually eroded auger.

eBay seller gweedoh machines his own new bushings from material that it’s much stronger than the stock ones. But from him and buy for life. You can see the size of the worn out bushings versus a new one below.

Each one comes pre-coated with food safe H1 grease as well.

Just pop the old one out and the new one in. The wailing is gone!

Note: I’ve included affiliate links to parts and products that helped me get my machine back in working order.

Bad iframe-resizer Attribute Effects

 I have a site that uses iframe-resizer.  After some code clean-up, every iframe on the app broke in seven different ways. Practically, this was the worst on pages that had infinite scroll or similar events triggered as the page moved. The resizer was triggering a scroll event which was triggering loading which was triggering more scrolling! To make matters worse, the scroll event handle was either non-existent or it was from jquery, and it was absolutely no help.

In the end, we had configured the attributes on the iframe tag incorrectly.  The clean-up had caused them all to be null when compiled into the app, so they never got rendered properly. This didn't show up as null in the final HTML, and there were no helpful errors to guide us. It took a long time to root out.

As you modify a system with iframe-resizer and everything goes to hell, make sure any changes to the iframe tag attributes or configuration is actually getting compiled down properly still. It can save a world of headache.

AWS CLI SSO Login - "Could not connect to the endpoint URL" Error

When attempting to log in via AWS SSO on the command line, you may encounter an error like below:

> aws sso login --profile <profile-name-from-aws-config>

Could not connect to the endpoint URL: "https://oidc.<region>.amazonaws.com/device_authorization"

I had not changed any settings.  It just randomly stopped working.

While I'm not sure of the root cause, restarting the PC has fixed it for me more than once. I have also thought that renaming your ~/.aws/sso folder might do the trick.

AWS CLI v2.2.43

Taming an AnyCubic Kossell Pulley 3D Printer

Quick post to note how I got my Anycubic Kossel Pulley basically working.  It took me forever to find how to do some of this, and I know I will forget it if I do not write it down.

• Use DaHai's configuration video for starters.
• Upgrade the firmware to Marlin 1.1.9.  I ended up using 1.1.9.1 as of this writing.
• Use DaHai's files and modify them to work with stock Steppers.  Use Arduino IDE to load the firware after replacing Configuration.h and Configuration_adv.h (which I did not make changes to).  Here are the changes I made to his Configuration.h:
• Line 624-626: Change these from his upgraded TMC2130_STANDALONE to stock A4988
• Line 705: I got crazy loud stuttering when first descending to the bed during a print.  Lower this to get rid of that.
• Line 868: I and several people online have measured and gotten good resulting prints with the Type 2 Probe Offset at -15.88
• Line 938 to 940: These need to be true for stock steppers.  DaHai's steppers did not need to be inverted.
• Line 1358-1364: Define your temperature presets. I have used PETG to great success with a preheat of 70C for the bed and 230C for the hotend.  This rises to print at 80C and 245C respectively during the print.
• When following the leveling instructions, the video shows a "Set Delta Height" option that is absent in the version of the firmware I loaded.  This caused me no end of headaches later when the method of subtracting the bed distance from both the Z-Height and Probe Offset produced weird math and never worked properly.  Instead, I ran auto-calibration, saved the settings, then:
• Noted my Z after going to Prepare -> Auto Home
• Brought the nozzle to the bed using Prepare -> Move Axis -> Move Z until a business card wouldn't move when squished between the axis and the bed.  I then noted the height
• Changed my Z height only by this amount by subtracting the number from the Z height, and a negative Z Height is thus added.
• Saved and Auto Homed
• Set my Probe Offset to 15.88 per recommendations online.
• Checked it again and only touched the Z Height when it was off.  Repeat the Z height move if this is still not right.
• With the printer calibrated, it was time to print.  I just used Cura because I couldn not get Slic3r or Pronterface to work easily.  Cura does not have the Kossel in it by default, but it can be easily added.  JDHarris on Thingiverse even shared the configuration file they made which can be picked up by Cura after a restart.
• I printed with PETG which has a high temp but no fumes.  I found hairspray for adhesion worked best thanks to several awesome tips by people connected with the PDX hacker community.  Thanks all!

After this, it just worked and keeps working.  It's magical what a little math and open source firmware will do.  That being said, it's my first printer.  It is bound to break in ways I can't even imagine now.  First order of business?  Print things that make the printer better, as is tradition.

Update: Not all is well in Whoville.  I've developed some Heat Creep with this PETG printing at 245C, and I haven't had the time to troubleshoot it.  Wish me luck!

AES CBC Encryption on OpenVMS

It turns out that using the convenience function ENCRYPT$ENCRYPT_ONE_RECORD on OpenVMS for AES CBC does something squirrelly.  It will not let you pass in an IV.  Instead, ENCRYPT$INIT sets the IV to 16 bytes of \0.  In order to ensure your identical plaintext first blocks aren't identical after encryption, your first 16 byte block needs to be your true IV.  This will get XORd with the null byte encrypted IV and sufficiently scrambled so your second block can be uniquely encrypted.  OR just do it right and avoid the convenience method.  Use ENCRYPT$INIT properly.

Ref: http://h41379.www4.hpe.com/doc/83final/4493/4493pro_025.html#encrypt_one_routine

"For AES, the optional P1 argument for the AES IV initialization vector is a reference to a 16-byte (2 quadword) value.
If you omit this argument, the initialization vector used is the residue of the previous use of the specified context block. ENCRYPT$INIT initializes the context block with an initialization vector of zero."

Quotes from Dan Kaminsky's Keynote at DEF CON China

Above is Dan Kaminsky's keynote at the inaugural DEF CON China.  It was nominally about Spectre and Meltdown, and I thought it was immediately applicable to testing at all levels.  Here are some moments that jumped out at me:

On Context:

"There's a problem where we talk about hacking in terms of only software...What does hacking look like when it has nothing to do with software." 1:55

"But let's keep digging." Throughout, but especially 5:40

"Actual physics encourages 60 frames per second. I did not expect to find anything close to this when I started digging into the number 60...This might be correct, this might not be. And that is a part of hacking too." 6:10

"Stay intellectually honest as go through these deep dives. Understand really you are operating from ignorance. That's actually your strong point. You don't know why the thing is doing what it is doing...Have some humility as you explore, but also explore." 7:40

"We really really do not like having microprocessor flaws...and so we make sure where the right bits come in, the right bits come out. Time has not been part of the equation...Security [re: Specter/Meltdown] has been made to depend on an undefined element. Context matters." 15:00

"Are two computers doing the same thing?...There is not a right answer to that. There is no one context. A huge amount of what we do in hacking...is we play contexts of one another." 17:50

[Re: Spectre and Meltdown] "These attackers changed time which in this context is not defined to exist...Fast and slow...means nothing to the chip but it means everything to the users, to the administrators, to the security models..." 21:00

"Look for things people think don't matter. Look for the flawed assumptions...between how people think the system works and how it actually does." 35:00

"People think bug finding is purely a technical task. It is not because you are playing with people's assumptions...Understand the source and you'll find the destination." 37:05

"Our hardest problems in Security require alignment between how we build systems, and how we verify them. And our best solutions in technology require understanding the past, how we got here." 59:50

On Faulty Assumptions:

"[Example of clocks running slow because power was not 60Hz] You could get cheap, and just use whatever is coming out of the wall, and assume it will never change. Just because you can doesn't mean you should...We'll just get it from the upstream." 4:15

"[Re: Spectre and Meltdown] We turned a stability boundary into a security boundary and hoped it would work. Spoiler alert: it did not work." 18:40

"We hope the design of our interesting architectures mean when we switch from one context to another, nothing is left over...[but] if you want two security domains, get two computers. You can do that. Computers are small now. [Extensive geeking out about tiny computers]" 23:10

"[RIM] made a really compelling argument that the iPhone was totally impossible, and their argument was incredibly compelling until the moment that Steve Jobs dropped an iPhone on the table..." 25:50

"If you don't care if your work affects the [other people working on the system], you're going to crash." 37:30

"What happens when you define your constraints incorrectly?... Vulnerabilities. ...At best, you get the wrong answer. Most commonly, you get undefined behavior which in the presence of hacking becomes redefinable behavior." 41:35

"It's important to realize that we are loosening the assumption that the developer knows what the system is supposed to do...Everyone who touches the computer is a little bit ignorant." 45:20

On Heuristics

"When you say the same thing, but you say it in a different time, sometimes you're not saying the same thing." 9:10

"Hackers are actually pretty well-behaved. When hackers crash code...it does really controlled things...changing smaller things from the computer's perspective that are bigger things from a human's perspective." 20:25

"Bugs aren't random because their sources aren't random." 35:25

"Hackers aren't modeling code...hackers are modeling the developers and thinking, 'What did [they] screw up?' [I would ask a team to] tell me how you think your system works...I would listen to what they didn't talk about. That was always where my first bugs came from." 35:45

On Bug Advocacy

"In twenty years...I have never seen stupid moralization fix anything...We're engineers. Sometimes things are going to fail." 10:30

"We have patched everything in case there's a security boundary. That doesn't actually mean there's a security boundary." 28:10

"Build your boundaries to what the actual security model is...Security that doesn't care about the rest of IT, is security that grows increasingly irrelevant." 33:20

"We're not, as hackers, able to break things. We're able to redefine them so they can't be broken in the first place." 59:25

On Automation

"The theorem provers didn't fail when they showed no leakage of information between contexts because the right bits went to the right places They just weren't being asked to prove these particular elements." 18:25

"All of our tools are incomplete. All of our tools are blind" 46:20

"Having kind of a fakey root environment seems weird, but it's kind of what we're doing with VMs, it's what we're doing with containers." 53:20

On Testing in the SDLC

"We do have cultural elements that block the integration of forward and reverse [engineering], and the primary thing we seem to do wrong is that we have aggressively separated development and testing, and it's biting us." 38:20

"[Re Penetration Testing]: Testing is the important part of that phrase. We are a specific branch of testers that gets on cooler stages...Testing shouldn't be split off, but it kinda has been." 38:50

Ctd. "Testing shouldn't be split off, but it kinda has to have been because people, when they write code, tend to see that code for what it's supposed to be. And as a tester, you're trying to see it for what it really is. These are two different things." 39:05

"[D]evelopers, who already have a problem psychologically of only seeing what their code is supposed do, are also isolated from all the software that would tell them [otherwise]. Anything that's too testy goes to the test people." 39:30

"[Re: PyAnnotate by @Dropbox] 'This is the thing you don't do. Only the developer is allowed to touch the code.' That is an unnecessary constraint." 43:25

"If I'm using an open source platform, why can't I see the source every time something crashes? ...show me the source code that's crashing...It's lovely." 47:20

"We should not be separating Development and Testing... Computers are capable of magic, and we're just trying to make them our magic..." 59:35

Misc

"Branch Prediction: because we didn't have the words Machine Learning yet. Prediction and learning, of course they're linked. Kind of obvious in retrospect." 27:55

"Usually when you give people who are just learning computing root access, the first thing they do is totally destroy their computer." 53:40 #DontHaveKids

"You can have a talent bar for users (N.B.: sliding scale of computer capability) or you can make it really easy to fix stuff." 55:10 #HelpDesk

"[Re: Ransomware] Why is it possible to have all our data deleted all at once? Who is this a feature for?!... We have too many people able to break stuff." 58:25

A) Original Twitter Thread
B) Thread Unroll from @threadunrollapp

Fixing Ford AC Head Controller Vacuum Problem

The AC on my land yacht (2009 Mercury Grand Marquis) has been in the fritz for a while. Last winter, it gradually stopped switching from max AC/recirculate (a necessary in Vegas), then got stuck on norm AC until it rested on Defrost/Floor. I was able to fix it with some basic troubleshooting, YouTube sleuthing, and two bucks in o-rings.

This shaky yet informative video by Ian Smith helped me diagnose it as a problem with vacuum only. The AC itself was fine. It blows cool air all day long. It just did so at the windshield. It couldn't be the blend-door actuator.

The same video showed me how to diagnose the vacuum problems. The black hose providing vacuum from the engine seemed fine: I was getting 20 inches of vacuum with the car turned on when I hooked up a bleed pump with a gauge (mine came from Harbor Freight, shown in the video). To test the actuators, all I had to do was hook a 'jumper' pipe from black to the other pipes. Each one seemed to hold air, and the actuators sprang to life once again. For the first time in a year, I had cold air blowing from the vents. The problem couldn't be in the lines. I pulled the controller head for a closer look.

The head itself is a bunch of electronics, a control panel, and one removable plate with four solenoids. The vacuum hoses come into this through a manifold, and the head controls trigger the solenoids to route vacuum from the black hose to the others. This triggers different actuators under the dash. Something was amiss in the manifold.

I returned to YouTube looking for rebuild instructions. I found this extremely helpful video from a Chicago mechanic. The solenoids contain an o-ring that dries out, wears out, and loses the ability to hold vacuum. I obtained close to the recommended o-rings from Lowes (#36, 5/16 OD, 3/16 ID, 1/16 thickness) as I was not willing to wait for Amazon. A little Oatey silicone lubricant made the tight squeeze work a little better. I found I had to seat the solenoid heads at least once before total reassembly. It was too difficult to do so at the end and fight with the other small parts at the same time. 45 minutes later, I had full control of my AC restored.

I can't believe it was this simple to fix the controller. I think I was intimidated by the AC (having spent $1500 last year to have the dealer redo the whole system from seals to refrigerant). I didn't want to break anything. A few targeted troubleshooting steps helped assuage any fears of irreparable harm, and now I have a comfortable cabin once again.