Mike Phillips

New Toy - #5000 Grit Trizact Foam Finishing Discs

Came into work this morning and found a box of 3M Trizact #5000 Foam Discs on my desk to test out...

Meguiar's #3000 is considered a ultra fine grit sanding/finishing disc
Mirka Abralon #4000 is considered an ultra fine grit sanding/finishing disc

I guess this makes 3M #5000 Ultra Ultra Fine?


#5000 Grit Trizact Foam Finishing Discs


Front



Back



Close-up



Need something to sand now... hmm...

Mike Phillips

Did some comparison testing between,
I'll let the pictures do the talking...

From left to right...

#1500 Grit Sanding Disc, #1500 Foam Backed Finishing Disc, #3000 Foam Backed Finishing Disc and #5000 Foam Backed Finishing Disc











At the #5000 mark you're really starting to restore reflectivity to the paint...





Stay tuned, we'll see what it takes to remove the sanding marks...

Mike Phillips

Okay, I'm a huge fan of the philosophy,

"Use the least aggressive product to get the job done"


I also like to push the envelope just to see... what can be done...


Mike aka smack in the detailing forum world suggested using Meguiar's Ultimate Polish with a Meguiar's black 7" Softbuff Foam Finishing pad and I thought,

"Whoa... that's way to gentle"


But... what the heck.

I taped-off a section of the panel that I finished out with a Unigrit foam backed #3000 Unigrit Finishing Disc and the section next to it where I finished out with a 3M #5000 Grit Finishing Disc and then buffed using the Ultimate Polish and the Black Finishing pad on a G110V2 on the 6.0 Speed Setting for 10 Section Passes.

Then I chemically stripped and inspected and estimate about 80% defect removal.

Next I used the Yellow 7" Softbuff Foam Polishing pad with the Ultimate Compound and re-buffed the same section for around 8 section passes and then chemically stripped and inspected the results.

100% defect removal. There was some noticeable micro-marring under the light from a Brinkmann Swirl Finder Light so I re-polished again using the same Black 7" Softbuff Foam Finishing Pad with the Ultimate Polish and then chemically stripped again.


Note: It should be stressed that I'm very familiar with the paint on this panel and I would categorize it at the soft range of paint, definitely not the hard range like a factory finish on a new car.

The only defects I could see were some light marring from wiping the paint using IPA which is not the best "lubricant" for wiping paint but does do a pretty good job of chemically stripping polishing oils.

(I talk about marring and IPA in my article, Hologram Free with a Rotary Buffer )


Below is a quick video I took where I explain the process I used and show the results. In the video I state something I post once in a while to the people that want to use tools besides a rotary buffer to remove sanding marks that goes something like this,

Sanding down an entire car and then removing 100% of your sanding marks already takes a long time using a rotary buffer, wool pad and aggressive compound, why would I want to use an approach that would be slower and less effective?

That's just me and I'm very comfortable using a rotary buffer. I know others are looking for a way to remove both sanding marks and other below surface defects using popular DA Polishers.

Can it be done? You bet. I'll let you decide the best approach for you and your project. This experiment was to,

• Check out the new #5000 Finishing Discs from 3M
• See how the sanded paint looks as compared to other levels of sanding discs
• See what it would take to remove the sanding marks

I accomplished these three goals. I like the 3M #5000 Finishing Discs but at the time of this post we don't stock them at Autogeek. If and when we do I would use them for my last machine sanding step just to make removing the sanding marks,

• Faster
• Easier
• Cooler to the paint

Here's the video...