I have seen a lot of companies offer polished products like intake manifold and other aluminum things that have many curves and crevices. I have even seen a very cool polished stock TPI manifold.

My question is how in the world do they smooth out and polish all theses little groves? I was thinking about polishing my PBR aluminum brake calipers

 

Cone shaped buffs can get into those curves.

 

you'd have to do a search on it, i know they use like 200grit, then 400 grit, then 600 grit and then some polishing compound like black magic from there on...the exact recipe is on here somewhere

 

No, how do you get into the small curves and all where sanding wheels and buffing wheels won’t fit. For example polishing a brake caliper how do you get between the fins? I now how to polish a flat surface like a plenum

 

You could fold a piece of sandpaper and stick it inbetween the fins. Its definitely not easy to do, no matter what you use.

 

How do companies like Holley or edelbrock do it? Is there a special machine or something. Like take a look at the carburetor below. There is no way you could get in all those small groves with sand paper.

 

And here is a polished edelbrock performer intake. I don’t see any ways of doing this with sand paper.

 

They probably use a vibrating media polisher. Its just a big bucket of vibrating material that slowly takes away the surface, just like sandpaper would, only it envelops the entire part. They probably put plugs into all the ports then just toss it in there

Here's some more info on it if you're interested: http://www.royson.com/whatis.html

 

exactly... there are HUGE bins that they throw the metal pieces in. They varry from bin to bin with whats inside it and what grid the material is. My dad used to have one for his gun, but was only for the gun shells, not the gun itself. It wouldnt be big enuff to fit a plenum, but maybe some bolts.

 

I use a die grinder with sanding drums "120,400" grits. I use strait drums ranging form 3/8 to 1/2 in dia. And also 3/8 tapered sanding drums. I would go insane if i'd try to sand all that by hand.

 

Ive been to the holley factory. The have a big bowl type bucket which they stick the parts into. The bucket contains small chrome particles which when heated melts onto the surface of the part. Its pretty cool when you see how its done.