Amount of force used while polishing

[SuperSnake850]

Just polished my jeep srt for the first time the other day, and the results were great... i did not use any pressure at all on my cyclo mostly because i was not sure if i should be using much force other than the weight on my hand on the machine... i was curious how much pressure you guys use while polishing on a scale of 1-10 10 pushing down as hard as you can lol I'm pretty sure i have a thicker clear coat on my jeep

[Chris@Adams]

On any machine polisher you want to make sure that you apply enough pressure to flatten out your pads.......

[gdwenger]

On any machine polisher you want to make sure that you apply enough pressure to flatten out your pads.......

Agreed for most polishers, however this doesn't hold true for Rupes machines. Everything they advise is to just use the weight of their polisher and you just guide it.

[GerryC]

If you are using a machine without forced rotation (Cyclo, PC), put a visible mark on your backing plates so you can see how fast or slow the pads are spinning. Rule of thumb is to apply enough pressure that the spinning motion is slowed to the point where it would take 2-3 seconds for a full rotation. This way you maximize the power of the dual action (rotation and oscillation). Forced rotation machines can get by with just the weight of the machine because the rotation speed is mechanically dictated by the polisher.