Guides

[AndyC]

Hope these are OK - I have a power polishing one in the pipeline (think C&S may have this already as I can't lay my hands on it at the mo) and several others I'm working on.

:)

[Clean_Image]

What would people like to see guides on?

[AndyC]

Rotary use Dan - for definite!

[182_blue]

yeh rotary is a good idea, i think it scares most people

[Suasexed]

Rotary! Rotary! Rotary!

Although i'm only getting to grips with the PC, so i think rotary is far off yet! :D

[roger]

It would be nice to have some sort of UK product version of the guides as on www.autopia-carcare.com.

Any chance of a joint venture? Or is it likely to be daggers drawn :eek:

<edit> getting deeper into the site I notice there is a good realtionship already. My apologies </edit>

[Clean_Image]

Rotary articles are frought with danger... they could go on for ever! And as there is no consensus on the right way and wrong way to do things, I could get a lot of flack!

I had a think about this on the way to work and I'll put together a primer, but I think we are going to be looking at at least a 4 part article, there are at least 3 main methods of rotatry buffing!

[182_blue]

how about just a video then :D

[Clean_Image]

how about just a video then :D

Funny you should say that!

[Clean_Image]

Hi folks, I haven't posted in a while as I have been really busy.
But I just finished typing up an article by Willy Winterfalk about a buffing system... it's a part 1, part two will contain loads of tips about how to rotary buff a car, how to stand, how to use a rotary machine, when to stop, how to get started etc. etc. (I hope to type it up once I have finished painting my mum's house!)

Sorry I can't post the actual article up here, I'm doing it on my site as a favour to Allbrite as they want the endorsement... but I love to get some feed back on Part one of the article, so that I can contact Willy and get him to cover any questions in part two.

Oh yeah, it's at:- http://www.clean-image.co.uk/articles/car-buffing-paintwork-correction-01.htm

PS. Willy is coming over to England in the spring and we hope to be shooting a training DVD on Rotary Buffing - I have already twisted his arm into making sure Detailing World gets a handful to give away.

[Brazo]

Hi Dan I did something very similiar you'll find it in the showcase gallery.

Porsche clearcoat is tougher tha I was expecting but a soft polishing pad on the rotary and a mild polish ssr2 cleared the swirls at 1500rpm where the portercable and cyclo had failed to do it in an acceptable period of time.

IMO Mopping paint like this with a wool pad should be last resort? Is it best to fight swirls with swirls?

I can't help thinking that if you find the portercable was inducing scratches then this was purely down to eitehr poor tecnique or wrong product choice. I can vouch that both PC and cyclo with the correct combo of pad and polish will remove holograms, indeed Mike Phillips from Meguiars who is a rotary god firmly believes that for a 100% perfect finish following up rotary work is essential with a random orbital.

Or am I jsut striving for perfection over time based results again:D

That said a great end result!

[Clean_Image]

Hi Dan I did something very similiar you'll find it in the showcase gallery.

Porsche clearcoat is tougher tha I was expecting but a soft polishing pad on the rotary and a mild polish ssr2 cleared the swirls at 1500rpm where the portercable and cyclo had failed to do it in an acceptable period of time.

IMO Mopping paint like this with a wool pad should be last resort? Is it best to fight swirls with swirls?

I can't help thinking that if you find the portercable was inducing scratches then this was purely down to eitehr poor tecnique or wrong product choice. I can vouch that both PC and cyclo with the correct combo of pad and polish will remove holograms, indeed Mike Phillips from Meguiars who is a rotary god firmly believes that for a 100% perfect finish following up rotary work is essential with a random orbital.

Or am I jsut striving for perfection over time based results again:D

That said a great end result!


Percieved wisdom is that you use a random orbital to hide buffer marks... the buffer marks from a rotary are large and sweeping, this is caused by the micros scratches all running in the same direction. A random orbital essentially hides these by putting random microscratches through them... also a lot of the swirl removers contain fillers. The method used by willy is different as you are effectivly just tickling the surface of the paintoword, and instead of hiding microscratches with random microscratches, you are actually smoothing over the peaks and grooves that make up the micro scratches.

To put it another way - just about anythink is abrasive.. if you run your finger over the paintwork, this will have an abrasive effect.
But under a microscope, paint is rough. You will never get it perfectly smooth at a micro level. But if the micro scratches are small enough they become invisible... that is except if the scratches all line up in the same direction, and then they all act together to catch the light and throw it back to you as buffer marks.
Yousing a random orbital also causes micro scratches but they don't line up... also, the more pressure you use, the more abrasive the effect. But you have to use some pressure to get an effect... after all how else would the random orbital work but through abrasion? Even if you use little or no abrasive compounds/polishes, the pad it's self will have an abrasive effect.

What Wily was doing that was different from this was using the pad at a high RPM, the larger pads size, the dense cell structure and surface contact area, means lots of friction. The products he uses then hold this heat and are essentually oils that act like a lubricant which reduces the abrasive effects.
But at the same time, having redused the size of the micro scratches you get a curious effect... The best example of how it works is to quickly run your bare arm through the flame of a lighter. I do not endorse such behaviour and won't be held liable for anybody who suffers injury whild doing it. But anybody who has ever done it will know that your skin and flesh will not suffer burns, but all the hairs will get burnt off.
Plastic is sometimes flame polished using a H20 water torch (forget the water bit - it is a real hot flame), and for best results, you prepare the surface by roughing it up with a fine sandpaper. The rough surface melts easily and smooths down.
Its the same kinda thing with chemical buffing. Because microscratches are so small, the peaks tiny... really tiny, smaller than the tips of the hairs on your arms, so the paint is easily softened, rounded off and smoothed over when subject to enough heat and friction.

These are really questions best answered by Willy - but I did see the experiment he did. The differences were minute... you had to look really hard, and it certainly coudn't be captured with a camera. But there was no doubt about it. The finish on the car was really good. When he tried to finish with the PC and Cyclo, the finish was good, good enough of most people to be really proud of. But it wasn't as good as the finish that was already there, and not as good as the area finished with the rotary.

How shiny is shiny? There comes a point when you are pressing your nose against the paint and giving yourself eye strain trying to see the difference, but I have no doubt that the system and products Willy has developed take things to a different level.

[Clean_Image]

P.S. Regarding the toughness of the paint, this Porsche was really quite tough which cme as a suprise to be as the blue one in the other article had clear coat that was really really soft. You could almost scrape it off with your fingernails.

It's funny, Porsche, Volvo, Mercedes, TVR and a few others tend to have soft paint as a general rule, but every now and again you will get one that is as tough as... well, an Audi.

[Brazo]

^^My porcshe paintw as tough but not as tough or badly swirled as an audi A4 that I did, don't get me wrong I am a complete rotary novice but using a mild polishing pad and either a mild compound or strong polish, however you classify SSR2.5 I could remove deep swirls from audi clearcoat without resulting too a wool pad. This in turn did not leave additional swirls to remove or remove too much clearcoat. I would add that in the UK there is too much readiness to mop paintwork, although I don't really mind as this give me work correcting it!

As far as the pc goes I have a lot of experience with this, I can only conclude that any products process/pads used by your guys with the pc were incorrect, Theer are manu pc users on here both novice and advanced but I do not know of one that has scratched the paint with one when used in the proper way.

I would urge caution with your guides, yes we all want machine polishing tips but when they contradict tried and tested tecniques that everyone on here has had great sucess with, people wills witch off. Are we all so badly wrong? Check the gallery for closeups with sunlight, high xennon 2pm daylight simulation power torches etc no scratches after using a pc.

I think it would be wrong to suggest such inaccuracies on a forum such as this which is used by newbies as well.

[Clean_Image]

This method is new and different - not wrong!
Stay tuned, because Allbrite is not the only company developing a similar system. Just take a look around to see who is already selling 8" pads - that will give you a clue.

[Brazo]

^^I'm not saying your method is wrong and as I said your results were outstanding, I do think there are safer methods though. What was wrong however is your portrayl of the porter cable as a machine that induces scratches!

[Throbbe]

^^I'm not saying your method is wrong and as I said your results were outstanding, I do think there are safer methods though. What was wrong however is your portrayl of the porter cable as a machine that induces scratches!

I didn't really get that impression at all. What he was saying about microscratches is perfectly correct. Anything coming into contact with paint will do the same. As I see it, a PC will reduce the roughness to a microscopic level, not visible to the human eye, even with low level magnification. Perhaps 'scratches' was the wrong word to use.

Similarly, Willy W's technique still won't leave the paint absolutely smooth, but perhaps more so than the PC.

[JJ_]

Good article, what sort of pads do you guys use as they look similar to Sonus.

I have been told to not have the rotary on the edge as it concentrates too much heat on the one area, was there a reason that willy did this, did he need more cutting action than that pad could give.

How does willy apply the carnuba by machine? Just scoop a bit out or does he also use the 4" pads?

Glad to see another person with a knowledgable background on here!

[Clean_Image]

I didn't really get that impression at all. What he was saying about microscratches is perfectly correct. Anything coming into contact with paint will do the same. As I see it, a PC will reduce the roughness to a microscopic level, not visible to the human eye, even with low level magnification. Perhaps 'scratches' was the wrong word to use.

Similarly, Willy W's technique still won't leave the paint absolutely smooth, but perhaps more so than the PC.
Yes, this was what I was getting at. I was talking in terms of micro maring - which are of course scratches, but I'm not talking about visible lines... the result was more like smudges, they looked like greasy marks.

[Clean_Image]

Good article, what sort of pads do you guys use as they look similar to Sonus.

I have been told to not have the rotary on the edge as it concentrates too much heat on the one area, was there a reason that willy did this, did he need more cutting action than that pad could give.

How does willy apply the carnuba by machine? Just scoop a bit out or does he also use the 4" pads?

Glad to see another person with a knowledgable background on here!

Using the edge of the pad will be covered in the next part... Willy only uses 8"pads. and you can't get them into every area so you have to use the edge. What you need to do is turn the speed down and lift pressure off the pad.

The foam pads, wool pads and backing plates are especially made for Allbrite by two different companies in America. They were made to Willy's specification, which means they are unique. (I have a boot full of the test pads, ones that didn't work or were tested to destuction).
This is fairly normal, most of the chemical companies buy in pads from outside contractors - I think that Allbrite uses three suppliers for pads, including the same companies that supplies Meguiars and DeWalt.

Just for the record, The Allpad is the flagship product of Allbrite Europe and as far as I know not being sold in the US - And at the moment, Willy is traveling Europe signing up European Distributors to sell the gear... but with no distributors yet up and running, this stuff isn't available.

The machie applied carnauba - this is a liquid carnuba wax, not a paste.
Liquid carnauba waxes are a pretty common trade product - F1 is a similar trade product which is popular in the UK and is great for application with the PC or Cyclo.
Cutting waxes are also really common in the trade - it's a bit like SRP (which is sold to the trade as Radiant). They are often used by dealerships as they can bring up dull paintwork. Some are fairly strong, others like SRP are really mild.
The product Willy uses is actually rather old, and called Cherry Dazzle (I know, I know - they tend not to do market research before naming trade products and American names tend to be dreadful - I can't use this product without thinking of David Dickinson!). The US formular was unusable in the UK as it was designed for California and Arazona weather. But they now do a European version which is less wet and oily - but not so much that it can't be applied by machine - which makes it a very nice product.

[JJ_]

Ahh that answers some stuff then!

Hope all is well at clean image, 8" pads must be huge to work with. Would be interesting to see them in action.

John.

[Finnie]

How about some pics to show us how much polish to put on each size pad and also what it looks like once broken down. Specifically Menzerna as it looks like i spent most of the day moving around already broken down IP!