My Ice maker drops ice unless the bucket is in place

We own a samsung rf28hfedtsr french door refrigerator. The ice maker kept freezing up, just as so many other people experienced. Samsung sent someone out to replace the ice maker and computer board as a fix. It never made ice after that and I can’t get a single appliance repair person to touch it…even the company (Conn Appliance) who installed the new ice maker. I’ve been researching what could be wrong as I still need to fix it. I accidentally left the ice bucket out last night for a while and it dropped tons of perfectly formed ice. I put the bucket back in over night….no ice. Took the bucket out again to test and perfect ice drops. What could this problem be? Do I need a new Ice bucket or is there a part that needs to be replaced causing this odd problem? Thanks for any advice!