As per the recent Rupes webinar on YouTube, rotation is secondary to oscillation when it comes to defect removal.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, especially the manufacturer. I certainly won't argue with their point of view.
What I will say is from years, dare I say decades of real-world detailing, that is out of all the guys that are known for teaching detailing classes I post
more write-ups sharing cars I ACTUALLY detailed, (that's continued real-world experience, I never stopped detailing cars just because I teach classes), one thing I can tell you that I'm sure of (again - based on actually running a buffer around the entire car from start too finish to make an owner/customer happy), that in order to remove paint i.e. remove below surface defects, the pad/backing plate on
ANY brand of free spinning orbital polisher, be it an 8mm all the way up to 21mm, must do 2 things,
- Rotate
- Oscillate
If it's
only oscillating, while some may try to make the case that it's still removing defects, i.e. removing paint,
it's doing it so slow that you will have to stand next to that car for a million years to get the job done.
Also my observation - when
any brand of free spinning orbital polisher is not rotating the pad
then the oscillation isn't really oscillation - from my eyes it always looks like all the pad is doing is
vibrating or jiggling (weakly), against the paint.
Look - you're not going to remove swirls and scratches, at least not remove them in a timely manner if all the pad is doing is vibrating against the paint. :laughing:
Paint is removed the most effectively when using a free spinning orbital polisher and the pad is both rotating and oscillating at the same time.
If this wasn't true,
why do so many people complain about pad stalling?
The reason they are complaining is because they are frustrated because they are not getting the job done, (removing swirls and scratches), in a timely manner.
Pad stalling = no real work being performed.
This one of the reasons I almost always grab the BEAST and now the CBEAST when I detail a car. My goal is twofold, I want to do 2 things,
1: Do any correction and polishing work as fast as humanly possible..
2: Consistently produce professional quality results. (the word consistently is as important as the word produce)
RUPES and Makita have both introduced
gear-driven orbital polishers, we can all
guess as to why they introduced them?
My guess is because they both
read the market and realized that "people" (that would be detailers, enthusiasts and body shop technicians), like me,
want and for practicality reasons,
NEED to do the correction and polishing steps
as fast as possible while producing pro quality results.
Pro quality results = swirl free results
Think about it.
Everyone can come to their own conclusions because I've been doing this long enough to know that arguing is a waste of my time and I simply won't do it.
I just taught my second roadshow class for 2019 and I let everyone in this class use all the popular brands of tools, both free spinning and gear-driven and I let them come to their own conclusions as to whether free spinning versus gear-driven is better and faster.
I'll share this - they all leave my classes knowing, (not guessing or thinking), that pad rotation when the goal is defect removal is key to their success. If the pad isn't rotating - you are not doing anything.
