There have been various attempts to make pieces of ice by forming an elongated section of ice and then somehow fracturing that ice section to form pieces which may or may not resemble ice "cubes", which are generally thought of as being formed individually, oftentimes in an individual cavity. Such apparatus is to be distinguished from continuous apparatus for making shaved ice or the like which operates on somewhat different principles and produces a soft ice.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,984,996 discloses such an ice-maker which freezes a vertical tube of ice of square cross section and employs a central rotating shaft to drive the frozen tube upward. The apparatus is designed for continuous operation in a compartment of a home-freezer and employs a pair of synchronized blade-type cutters at the top to fracture the slowly upwardly moving tube of ice into cube-like sections. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,595,588 and 3,287,927 also disclose ice-making machines which intermittently freeze a vertical column of ice and then eject that frozen column slowly upward where a breaking mechanism is provided for fracturing the emerging column into pieces at an upper location. None of these designs has proved to be entirely satisfactory, and it is not believed that any of them has been successful commercially. Accordingly, improved designs in ice-making equipment of this type have continued to be sought after.