The short answer
On the WF family the usual reason a Criterion refrigerator is not making ice is compartment not cold enough to trigger harvest, and that is where the order below departs from the brand-generic article one level up: on the fan-cooled frost-free build it outranks inlet valve or low supply pressure. The check that confirms which build you have is simple — a vent grille on the freezer rear wall means the ice maker is fed cold air from the same evaporator as the cabinet. Everything on the water side — the arm, the filter, the line, the fill tube — is owner work; the harvest module is not.
What you observe on these models
- A plug of ice on the fill tube — Self-reinforcing, since every failed fill adds to it.
- Cubes are small, hollow or half-formed — A fill problem rather than a harvest problem, which points at flow.
- The door water flow has also weakened — A shared restriction, which usually means the filter.
- Ice on the freezer floor rather than in the bin — An overfill or a misaligned fill, which is a leak story more than a production story.
- The mould is full of ice that never drops — Water is arriving; the mechanism or the sensor is not releasing it.
- NEAR MISS — no ice and the cabinet is not cold either — That is a cooling fault first; the ice maker is downstream of it and the cooling page applies.
Causes, most likely first on the WF family
- Compartment not cold enough to trigger harvest — Ranked first here: the mould only releases when its sensor reads cold enough. A compartment sitting above that threshold produces a mould full of slush and no harvest at all.
- Inlet valve or low supply pressure — Second: the valve opens for a fixed time rather than to a level, so anything that reduces flow leaves a part-filled mould and a cube that never forms properly.
- Harvest motor or ejector module — Third: it sits low because everything above it is more common and cheaper to exclude, not because it is rare in absolute terms.
- Water filter restricting flow — Fourth: a filter at the end of its life throttles the fill without stopping it. Cubes get smaller over weeks, which is why the owner rarely connects the two.
- Supply line kinked behind the cabinet — Fifth: the line is soft tubing and the appliance gets pushed back against it. A kink reduces flow to a trickle without leaking a drop.
- Mould sensor not calling for harvest — Sixth: the sensor that decides the cubes are ready can read warm and simply never call. The mould sits full, the cabinet is cold, and nothing happens.
Check in this order, and why
- Check whether the compartment is genuinely hard-frozen — A freezer holds food safely at 0 °F (−18 °C) or below, and a mould needs that cold to harvest.
- Watch one fill and see whether the mould fills to its line — A part-filled mould separates supply problems from mechanism problems immediately.
- Note whether cubes form and then stay put — Formed but unharvested cubes move the fault from water to mechanism.
- Compare the door water flow with what it used to be — A weak dispenser and small cubes together point at one shared restriction.
Before you open anything
Safety
Isolate the appliance at the plug or the breaker before opening anything, and treat the capacitor as live for a minute after. The door interlock stays connected, always: it stops the fan when the door opens and that is the whole point of it. Stop at once if you see oil at the compressor or the tubing, because the sealed system is open and that is licensed work. Moving a loaded cabinet is a two-person job on a tall unit.
Models in the WF family
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| WF180 | criterion:refrigerator:wf |
| WF90-C | criterion:refrigerator:wf |
When to call a technician
The line is water versus mechanism. Everything on the water side — the arm, the filter, the line, the tube — is owner work. Once you have watched a full fill arrive and nothing happen, the remaining causes are the module and its sensor, and those are a service call.
