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Holograms

Detailer meme showing holograms on a car's paintwork.
Detailer meme showing holograms on a car's paintwork. Another name for this phenomenon is 'zebra stripes' and from this photo you can see why.

Holograms is one of several names for microscopic scratches which can show up on highly polished surfaces as imperfections in the finish.

Often these can only be seen under very harsh light which is why a detailer who is polishing a car should use inspection lights and view the car from all angles.

Cars are usually machine polished indoors to prevent contamination from dust and grit causing additional scratches, but indoor lighting is seldom sufficient to reveal microscopic scratches.

Even the finest of sponge pad and finishing polish is leaving microscopic scratches, and if a rotary polisher is used which doesn't use a random pattern, then hundreds of thousands of these scratches line up together when can then be seen under certain light to form a smudge or hologram effect.

Polishes themselves contain oils as lubricants, which can act as fillers to hide these scratches, meaning they can be completely invisible even under harsh lighting, until some time later when those oils evaporate revealing the marred finish. This is why it is important to clean down the paintwork with alcohol before final inspection.

See Micro-Marring and Buffer Trails.

 

Written by . Last updated 05/01/2023 15:07