| a) A rotary orbital buffer- spins on a double axis, resulting in a pretty much "random" motion of a single point on the pad. This simulates the "random" motion of hand application of polishes. It has the advantage that no heat is generated, so you cannot burn your paint. The downside of this is that you cannot abrade the clear coat either to remove scratches. The PC pretty much just smoothes over the tops of the scratches and pits, not really sanding away any measurable clear coat.
b) With a high-speed rotary polisher - you will be removing a certain amount of clear coat and actually levelling the surface. This is good because you truly remove the scratches, not just making them less refractive to light, as the PC does. The problem is that you only have about 1.5 or 2 mil of clear coat to work with. You seriously have to make a judgment call about whether any defect is so severe that you cannot live with it and therefore it is worth risking clear coat failure to remove it with the rotary  | 
Linear Mode
