Polishing with a sanding machine

[Shy19s]

a friend of mine just told me he polished his car using a machine sander, but put a soft cotton cloth instead of sandpaper to apply the polish with..
he told me his sander moves backwards and forwards, compared to a machine polish it doesnt go around.. but i just thought id ask a few experts there opinions on this?

Would this work, would this cause damage, or have any benefits?

 

[inigoj]

A random orbital polisher and a random orbital sander are more or less identical.

You may get a few extra's, like 'soft start' on the polisher, and no dust extraction.

I would want to use deeper padding though.

 

[WX51TXR]

But is it random orbital, or is it a plane-based sander, i.e. rectangular pads? If it's random orbital then it should work fine, but as above, you really should use thicker foam pads for product application, but if it's not an orbital design then I would strongly avoid it. :icon_thumright:

 

[Shy19s]

Its a rectangular sander than just moves forward and back fast. I saw his car today and its come up quite nice, but it was abit of a dog before. Either way thanks for the replies, i dont think id try it on mine anyway.