Seeing swirls...

When detailing, halogen lamps don't really reveal everything unless looked at with an angle. That is also killing my eyes, so I was looking for a new way to spot swirl marks.

I know of the 3M Sun Gun or the Brinkman something light. Sun Gun is freakin expensive and the brinkman seems to be not worth the money for its purpose! So outside of those, what else is there?

Here's what another detailer suggested to me.

Yeah we'd look pretty stupid and like we're going exploring for a while, but if he can see swirls efficiently like this, that would be great! Anyone else try this? I'm about to buy a head lamp just to try it

edit: yes that is you eyezack

 

Pretty sure Ive seen a write up either on here or Autopia of someone using an LED light.

 

I have an led worklight and it is ok for spotting defects..

No light that I have tried shows defects like the sun...

My next venture is to get a metal halide light or high pressure sodium light - THEY ARE THE BOMB for spotting defects.. How do I know well, they are the lights at gas stations and other industrial applications that we all know shows defects like a mutha!

 

I happen to have a couple 400w metal halide lights in my garage. Ive had them for years....looks like I just found a job for them again.

 

PLEASE SELL ME ONE!!!!

 

HaHa the shipping would kill you.....the housings are heavy.

Heres a pic of the bulb....

 

sun is hurtful to the eye, so i was just looking for an alternative

cool! it looks fragile and not fun to be carry around. i understand why these lights would show defects a lot better than LEDs though

 

Nothing beats sodium vapour lights
We have sixty24 of them above our workshop floor

 

Cool, I was mentioned lol

If you want I can do some comparison shots for ya. I have metallic colors for both my cars(Bamboo Pearl is super annoying) anyway so I can test both the halogen, Brinkmann and my LED headlamp if you really want to see that it shows just that much more. Just let me know haha. I'll just need to steal my camera from my friend thats all

 

Um..I got a request, would it be possible for you to show the set up at your shop? Meaning can you take a picture of the set up? I'd love to see it.

 

HPS or high pressure sodium will be very deceiving in matching color of a car, the lights is a very dull yellow, the metal halide bulb/light mentioned early does the same job and emits a much better spectrum of light (more natural).

I would look on ebay, they are about 100$ for a 400w bulb/ballast setup, and they will do the job of the sun almost better, problem is, you can't re-position the bulb because it is fixed to the housing, so side panels would be difficult to identify swirls, but hood/trunk would be perfect if the bulb was positioned above the car.

IB

 

hmmm. i've ordered an LED headlamp to be a swirl explorer. will let you guys know how well that works out for me. I'll try the metal halide light some time too

 

I'm just curious how you came about the conclusion that the Brinkmann is not worth the money for it's purpose? The brinkmann is all I use and the only thing it doesn't show at times is very light holograms in the paint... the trick with the brinkmann is to place it as far away from the paint as you can, about 4-6' and it will show every little swirl on almost any color (greys and whites are a bit tricky sometimes)

 

Which one did you get man? I believe the more LEDs/powerful the better the ability it is to spot them. I'm using this one before I upgrade to a multiple LED format. At most I can do is 4 of them right now. I have 2 low power, 2 high power, all 4 on, and the 2 red LEDs as a final spotter

 

Interesting device... I have never seen that before.

 

Sure NICA, I'll get to that shortly
Besides the lights, it's 900 sq metres working area with 200 sq metres of (2) offices, lounge room, bathroom and kitchen

 

Sup Denzil, didn't recognize you without your bike brake light avatar haha. Its just one of the outdoor LED headlamps that I got from WalMart. You can use pretty much any LED out there as long as it powers on more than 1 LED at a time and is somewhat powerful. I can use mine on the 2 high power LEDs to flash my neighbors window from my window across the street :headbang:

 

nica has comparison pictures on some other forum that i saw when i was googling. yeah, i know you have to angle it to see the imperfections, but i'm already doing that with my halogen lights a lot to see everything. I honestly do not know how powerful the Brinkman is, but I don't want to have to keep changing its angles just to see the imperfections where i may have other options that don't require me to do so.

i'm getting this one

DealExtreme: $9.34 Ultra Bright 67-LED 4-Mode Headlamp

 

LoL, yeah, I changed my avatar across all forum boards. It was kind of a pain since every forum had different resolution and file size requirements.

I'll be sure to check out some of those LED headlamps when I go by Wal-Mart again. I don't think I'd really need it since I have the Sears 1000W halogens and the Infratech CM5300. I bet I could find another use for it though.

Man that is a sweet device for that price. I think we're supposed to purchase some retractable RJ-45 cables for our Computer Engineering club at SJSU and I heard that shipping takes a while from anything from DealExtreme. Of course, that's just what I hear. Either way, it's cheap!

 

Sounds like a great shop if you ask me :thumb:

Thank you for intertaining my additcion to pictures eace:

So did you post them yet :waiting: hahaha just teasing :whistle: