Best way for Polish

I'm trying to see which is better to put on polish after compounding. In other words, this is applicable to a 3 step scenerio where you compound with high speed, then polish, then wax.

On the 2nd step where you polish, would it be better to use a non-cutting foam pad(like blue or gray) on high speed or would it be better to use 18lbs low speed orbital with terry cloth?

-tom

Depending on how aggressive you are compounding will answer your question: for instance there are times when we high speed buff with a wool-foam infused pad and 1000 compound at 1000-1200 rpm, high speed buff with a blue edge foam pad at 1000-1200 rpm with 1500 compound, polish with high speed blue edge foam pad at 1200 rpm and then finish with wax or sealant. Other times we will use a dual head polisher (cyclo) that has different pad attachments: for instance yellow is there cut pad. We may "cut" the car with our 1500 compound using the dual head polisher and then finish with a one step polish wax.

A typical 3-step for us is high speed buff with blue edge foam pad and 1500 compound at 1200 rpm, polish with dual head cyclo using their indicated polish pads and then either apply wax or sealant with cyclo or by hand.

jmoran,

Thanks for the reply. Can you do much "cutting" at 1000-1200rpm? On aggressive cuts, we use "wool" pad with at 1800 or 2400rpm. I don't think we've ever buffed with any rpm lower than 1400. We then follow it up with polish then wax. So, ours is 3step process. On occasion when the paint is in good condition, we may use cutting foam pad instead of the wool pad and go at lower rpm(bust still around 1800) with less gritty compound. But 90% of the cars need full 3 step process with wool pad at high rpm.

Maybe we're just getting more crappy cars than you?

Also, I heard that the dual cyclons aren't that great for aggressive cutting. Or am I misunderstanding?

We use very little wool and the wool I do use is thin and is infused with foam and is only used on the cars that need it or have been wet sanded. Otherwise I am "cutting" cars with a Blue Edge Foam pad and our 1500 compound. The compounds we use, primarily our 1500 works very well at 1000-1200 rpms. If we ran it at the speeds you mentioned it would gum up on us. The only time I will run higher than that is if I have had to wet sand an area, then I might push it to 1500-1800 to remove the wet sand marks. I am primarily working on Mercedes Benz and have spent the last 10 months finding the right applications to use to buff surfaces. I got rid of all my old school wool pads and use only foam or foam infused wool. Our motto is also least to most aggressive. We do not "cut" a car if it doesn't need it. That's where our cyclo comes in. Sometimes the paint just needs a good cleaning and polish, which we can accomplish with the cyclo.

Cyclos are not for aggressive cutting, but they can do minor compounding. We use them a lot with light color vehicles (silver, pewter, white). We use their yellow compounding pads with our 1500 compound and they do a great job. The beauty of them is that I can take a guy day one and put it in his hand and have him three step a car with it without worrying that he will burn moldings, paint, etc... They are an invaluable tool in our shop.

1.Compound with foam cutting pad.
2. Machine glaze with a foam polishing pad.
3. Hand wax.

I use a rotary buffer for the compound and glaze.