How often should I rake my buffing wheels?

[blinddog]

i read to do it "periodically". well, thats kinda wide open- lol! what do you guys do?

let's just say for example, i'm buffing/polishing cast aluminum, 2hrs a day. Thanks fellas- have a great weekend

[baz]

Re: How often should I rake my buffing wheels?

this is one of the things in polishing that you will have to find out by yourself .
there is no set rules as to how often to rake a wheel,you can rake a wheel everytime you start a new part or whenever you feel that the wheel does not perform as well , also sometimes you can see some kind of metal particles on top of the wheel.
if you use different compounds on same wheel (not really recomended)then you should rake everytime you do a change.
whenever the wheel looks saturated with compound residue is also a good time to rake.
if you are buffing different materials like stainless steel, aluminium ,copper then you should also rake the wheel.
but remember that the more you rake a wheel the faster it will wear out.

[blinddog]

Re: How often should I rake my buffing wheels?

thanks baz- I guess it's just "experience", huh? I'm getting better working with the different wheels and compounds. i got a really good result today on a "practice" pc. i have laying around. Richard gave me some excellent help. everything he recommended was right on the money! that was a big help.

but today i noticed during buffing i noticed tiny pits show up that werent there previously...i'm guessing small flakes of metal on the wheel made them? I guess I should have raked during my "session".

so i was curious what some of you guys do. thanks again!

[baz]

Re: How often should I rake my buffing wheels?

sometimes those tiny pits come from the porosity in the material, on some castings if you remove too much material those pits will start to appear and by trying to get them to dissapear more of them will appear at different places.

[blinddog]

Re: How often should I rake my buffing wheels?

thanks.....i kinda thought that could be a possibility, as well.