Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 7
For final polishing, KB mentions "ample speed and pressure". When he talks about speed, is he referring to the speed the polisher is set on, or the speed of moving the polisher across the surface?
My guess is that the speed he's talking about refers to the Speed Setting of the tool
If you're trying to remove defects, even very shallow defects you're talking about removing a little paint and you need the pad rotating for this and in most cases 4.5 is about as low speed setting you can go to and still get some rotation and then it's even kind of wimpy.
So for most polishing you're going to be on the 5.0 to 6.0 Speed setting.
Arm speed needs to be very slow for major defect removal with aggressive products and aggressive pads, when moving to the polishing step you can bring your arm speed up a tick or two but you'll still want firm pressure to start with and then for you last few passes decrease your downward pressure.
Also, he states, "which is an amount that allows the pad to minimally rotate" With a Flex 3401 being forced rotation, that's not possible.
Is this method only applicable with the non forced rotation DA's?
Well the method is only applicable with the non-forced rotation DA's because your pressure with a Flex 3401 isn't going to minimally rotate the pad.
The rotating speed or ability of DA Polishers that use a free rotating spindle assembly are easily affected by downward pressure and or holding the pad at an angle or with more pressure to just one side of the face of the pad.
Next time you're using a DA Polisher, purposefully apply more pressure to just one side of the pad and see how it affect rotating ability.
