# New Toy - #5000 Grit Trizact Foam Finishing Discs



## 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...


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## lowejackson

5000 grit, wow.

So, where does this fit in the process compared to a mild polish


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## Jav_R

So, can we remove this sanding marks without compounding? I'll wait for the testing


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## pegs

I've used Trizact 3 or 4000 cant remember which as it was a couple of years ago and thought it was fricking awsome.

3M guy told me to fire it up with a DA and then just go over with 3M ultra fine.

The results where amazing!!!!

Enjoy


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## EliteCarCare

Looks good, the trizact discs are great by hand and by machine, been using them for a while now.

We've also been supplying the small de-knibber sized discs (35mm) in 5000 grit. :thumb:

Alex


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## P200MSD

Would one disc do a car or can you re-use them? How much is a box RRP?


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## Mike Phillips

pegs said:


> 3M guy told me to fire it up with a DA


Wrote this in 2010, too long to copy and paste,

*Dampsanding Tools, Tips and Techniques by Mike Phillips*

*Using 3M Air DA Sanders









Using the 3" Griot's Mini Polisher as a Dampsander*


















*Using Meguiar's, Porter Cable and Griot's DA Polishers as Machine Dampsanders*


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## Mike Phillips

Did some comparison testing between,

#1500 Grit Sanding Discs - Meguiar's 
#1500 Foam Backed Finishing Discs - Meguiar's 
#3000 Foam Backed Finishing Discs - Meguiar's 
#5000 Foam Backed Finishing Discs - 3M​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, tomorrow we'll see what it takes to remove the sanding marks...


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## Jav_R

wow, great comparison as always mike!
looks great that 5000 grit


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## Sh00ter

Will be interesting to see if the 5000 gets rid of 3000 marks, going to be wet sanding my focus in a couple of weeks so will follow this thread closely!


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## Mike Phillips

Sh00ter said:


> Will be interesting to see if the 5000 gets rid of 3000 marks, going to be wet sanding my focus in a couple of weeks so will follow this thread closely!


Didn't have time to post all the pictures I took yesterday but I can assure you I took enough to document the entire process. Seems sometimes no one appreciates the time it takes to take the pictures, crop them, resize them to 800 pixels wide then upload and insert them so sometime I don't post everything.

Point being via pictures I show sanding the ENTIRE panels with S61500 and then blocked off 1/4 of the panel (to the left), and re-sanded 3/4 wit the S6F1500, ((second to the left), then blocked off 1/4 of this sanding mark section and re-sanded the remaining half with S6F3000, (3rd section from the left), and then blocked off this section into halves and then sanded the remaining 1/4 section of the hood with the #5000

So what you see is a progression of working my sanding marks to a more shallow depth from one end to the other end. In the real world a person wouldn't normally do this much sanding unless they are a perfectionist and have confidence in the film build of the paint.

I'm not sure that #5000 grit can "effectively" be used after #1500 grit and then go to machine buffing, I know I would want to include at least one more grit level in-between the two extremes.


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## Sh00ter

Ahhhhh - the penny drops! 

Many thanks for explaining it a bit more for me. It makes perfect sense now.
I have only seen using a DA with sanding discs once before so am very intrigued! Have just read through the link you posted, very, very informative. Great guide


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## 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...*

*#3000 & #5000 Grit Wetsanding Marks Removed*
*with a DA Polisher*


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## Sh00ter

Cool post, great video, really gives something to think about


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## Saab_viggen

Im wondering Has this sectioned off panel been sanded such as this:
Sect1: #1500 
Sect2: #1500 + #1500foam back
Sect3: #1500 + #1500foam back + #3000 foam back
Sect4: #1500 + #1500foam back + #3000 foam back + #5000 3m

or just each step on the panel as it is with no previous steps
#1500 Grit Sanding Discs - Meguiar's 
#1500 Foam Backed Finishing Discs - Meguiar's 
#3000 Foam Backed Finishing Discs - Meguiar's 
#5000 Foam Backed Finishing Discs - 3M
Im interested to get one of these mini sanders to use #5000. I have been hand wet sanding my car with meguiar papers #1500 , #2000 (depending on inspection) , #2500 , #3000 . 
with the panel at #3000 im concerned that im still seeing 3000 sanding marks 'grain' I have set up from only sanding the entire process either vertically, or horizontally depending on panel. If I now got #5000 on a small rotary or DA , it could remove all the #3000 marks before thinking about relying on rotary or DA compounding to remove the fine marks of my hand sanding


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## Mike Phillips

Sorry for the late reply, last week I was on vacation and for the days before vacation I was charged with some hot projects that took top priority for completion and this knocked me off the forums.



Saab_viggen said:


> Im wondering Has this sectioned off panel been sanded such as this:
> Sect1: #1500
> Sect2: #1500 + #1500foam back
> Sect3: #1500 + #1500foam back + #3000 foam back
> Sect4: #1500 + #1500foam back + #3000 foam back + #5000 3m


I followed your first list of steps as quoted above...



Saab_viggen said:


> Im interested to get one of these mini sanders to use #5000.


One thing for sure, I will choose to machine sand over hand sanding any day of the week unless the area to be sanded is too small or shaped in a way that it would be unsafe to machine sand.


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