I'm planning to get an ice cream making machine soon.

[Archae]

Any input as to a good one?

I know Cuisinart makes a good one.

[drray23]

1. we have a cuisinart.

it works pretty well.

[Archae]

2. How do you you make it work?

Add ice?

What ingredients?

[drray23]

3. no ice needed

You make the ice cream base by warming up milk in a saucepan, adding sugar, heavy cream and whatever else you want like vanilla, chocolate.. Let it cool off a bit and then pour it into that machine. It has a builtin freezing system. It will churn and freeze as it goes . Takes 20 minutes or so if I remember right (we have not used it recently).
It comes with a recipe book with dozens of ice creams and gelatos.

[emulatorloo]

4. I have the Cuisinart ICE-60W. Excellent and very easy to use. I make the batter in my blender

You keep the batter overnight in the fridge and make the ice cream the next day. Great recipe book included.

Haven’t needed to boil anything. It is on Amazon for around $130.00

If you want you can download the manual and recipe book from the cuisinart website to get an idea about what’s involved.

[jmowreader]

5. Whatever you do...

...don't put whole blueberries in your ice cream. Always crush them.

I made the mistake of doing that once. The resultant batch became known as "blueberry marble" because that's how hard they get.