SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Overheating

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20241008-78616-2147336091. Severity: No Incident, No Injury. Product: GE UNC15NJBII (GE Profile Nugget Ice Maker Model UNC15NJII (or UNC15NJBII)). Incident: I own a GE Profile Ice maker, model UNC15NJII. That's the model number on the receipt, but the model plate inside the unit says UNC15NJBII. I bought it in April 2020 from Home Depot. It is a built-in ice maker installed under an island in our kitchen and is regularly cleaned and the ice is used for consumption all the time. On Sep 25th 2024 I did a routine cleaning and noticed a fine gray substance in the bottom of the ice bin and along the lip that the ice slides over as it is produced. At first I thought this was mold or similar, and scrubbed it up with an abrasive sponge and paper towels. I could not get all of the gray material off the bin; there is still a "stain" of a gray line running around the perimeter of the bin near the bottom. However when I restarted the ice maker and observed the first pieces of ice falling from the hopper, I noticed black material suspended in the ice nuggets. I assumed again this was mold that may have somehow made its way into the machine. I unplugged the machine to try to further investigate. When that ice melted, I wiped up the black stuff, and realized on my paper towel that it was sparkling like some kind of metal. I got a magnet and confirmed it was metal shavings. Similarly, the very fine gray material that I had on a paper towel was also magnetic in nature. I tested this myself several times. When starting the ice maker with an empty bin from an empty tank, the first ice will have the most coarse shavings, and progressively the ice gets more clear, with the worse ice settling to the bottom of the bin where people are less likely to