Preferred swirl spotter?

N

number1show

New member
I just noticed Flex offers a swirl spotter for $40. There's also the 3m Sun Gun for a reasonable $450, and a diy sun gun is around 50 plus labor.

There's also brinkmanns and possibly others? Is there really no difference between the 3m and diy sun gun?
What's the best of the lot?
 
I use the FLEX. I like it because I can put it in my pocket. Polish....wipe away residue....then quickly retrieve it from my pocket to inspect the paint.

The less I have to stand up or move around, the less moaning/groaning :)
 
I would think any good focused light in the 5000k range would work well as a swirl finder light. I have a Pelican single diode LED flashlight (I think it was like $100 or something) and it works great for spotting defects. Not as cheap as the flex or the Rupes pen light but its also waterproof and has a full metal body. It was something I got through work a long time ago.

Isnt the 3M sun gun more geared toward painters for color matching? I could be wrong but I thought I remember learning about it in school years ago
 
I prefer headlamps because you don't even have to fish them out of your pocket. I've had really good luck with Fenix lights. I also have a Spark headlamp but the switch failed and neither the importer/seller nor the company have been very responsive.
 
The 3m Sun Gun was developed decades ago for automotive Painters to help them get the best color match when mixing the factory pack paint to match older existing paintwork..

Somehow, over the years someone decided it was good for paint correction and maybe it is, I never used one for that.

Later swirls were checked under flourescent daylight tubes and halogen work lights on a stand..

Brinkmann made some handy hand held lights that were rechargeable and they work pretty good but I hear eventually the batteries wont take a charge and they are not easily replaced..

Later, Led's started becoming popular for swirl checking..

All the lights will do pretty good at finding swirls, some better than others, some will actually hide swirls too..

I think that the headlamps people have been using for a few years now may have a lot of merit, and certainly, they are much handier and way cheaper..

And lastly, the best light has always been sunlight, around Noon or 100pm, and as bright and unfiltered as possible..

Good luck with your research !
Dan F
 
Different people, looking at different paints, have different preferences when it comes to what light to use. People can even differ regarding what time of day/angle of illumination is best with natural sunlight. Or whether sunlight is all that demanding compared to other choices. What about at night under high-up-there parking lot/gas station lights? What if you keep working at inspecting that "perfect paint" for another half-hour or more, changing up all the variables? Heh heh, how much do you really care?


IME, SunGuns work best for very fine holograms. It's the only way I can *ever* spot them other than in natural sunlight, and Mike Philips has teased me (good-naturedly) about using the SunGun because under some conditions it's *less* forgiving than sunlight. It has its uses spotting other types of marring too, but those types can, IME, be spotted under other, less pricey, lights. Unless you're using a rotary or correcting somebody else's rotary work, I can't imagine somebody actually needing a SunGun and their batteries are simply awful.

Can you spot *all* the marring that *you* want/need to see so that you never have any "oops, I missed that and it matters to me..."-type discoveries? If so, then just keep doing what you're doing. If not, my best advice is to just experiment until you find out what works best for *you*. Remember to vary the illumination/viewing angles/distances too; this can take a while and I don't mean just an hour or two with one or three different versions of each variable. It's one of those things where I don't think others can answer the question for you.

OK, just FWIW, I use incandescent lights (both 60w and 320w), 500/1000w halogens, natural sunlight, and occasionally fluorescents (but those don't work for me for swirl-spotting). Hardly ever use the SunGun any more so I'm down to four or five types of lighting that *I* need when doing correction (which I simply don't do much any more). I find the xenon versoion of the Brinkman basically worthless for swirls/marring. I'm experimenting a bit with LEDs but don't use them regularly, ditto for my incandescent-bulb flashlights. Even after doing this for decades, I still spend as much time inspecting as I do correcting, it's *that* challenging for me to spot everything.
 
I just got the Rupes. It's works great on white and that is hard to see defects on in the garage.

I'm happy.
 
LED tripod/flashlight. No heat, the white light I find shows defects more clearly than the yellow halogen.
 
Rsurfer said:
The sun and it's free.
Click to expand...

Not always very convenient though. I've had to employ a helper and move the vehicle over and over and.. to have it shining just right on the desired part of the vehicle, and had to do this at the right time of day for the illumination angle to be just right, which gave me a limited window of opportunity. This is what prompted me to splurge on the SunGun.
 
A 200 lumen (Measure of brightness) LED flashlight can be purchased at Batteries Plus (Now Batteries Plus Lights) for about $20.00.

I bought a small MagLight 168Lumen LED aluminum flashlight that uses 2 AA batteries for about $25.00 at a local farm supply (Mills Fleet Farm). Works pretty good. A lot of the pro detailers wear a LED Flashlight headband that is this bright for hands-free inspection and lighting while correcting and/or polishing. The good one's run about $75.00 to $100.00 at upscale sporting equipment supply stores, OR you can look on-line.

I think if you research this "lighting needed to finding swirls", you'll come to a quick conclusion that LED lighting is the "new" way to go. It seems to me that 5000K (lighting "temperature"or color wavelength) was the ideal "color" or "temperature" to have.

That said, halogens that some may consider obsolete could be had for "cheap" at garage or rummage sales. These aren't so bad IF the ambient temperature you are working in is cool (like below 60°), but they can sure make a garage area a lot warmer than is necessary in the summer!!
 
I believe there is not one light that is best for every situation and IMO it's best to use 2-3 for inspecting. That being said, I prefer my Fenix PD35 and TK15 for inspecting my work over all others. I'll also use my LED headlamp on jobs where 99-100% correction is the goal.

The sun definitely does not show everything and there have been numerous time where the Fenix shows micro marring that can't be seen under the sun. It's also not always available which is a huge factor. I do feel it is good for seeing rotary holograms though. I was not impressed with the Sun Gun.
 
RaskyR1- The SunGun *IS* a huge PIA for spotting holograms or most anything else. I was less "impressed by its performance" as opposed to "resigned to using it" because it was the only way to do what I needed. The expression "plenty of fussin' & cussin' " comes to mind.
 
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