I used the same 1/2" slow speed DeWalt drill outlined on the perfectpolish.com site with good success. It never faltered and was slow and powerful enough to eat through some really bad areas without burning the aluminum. The trick was fabricating a balanced 1/2" to 5/8" adapter to fit the backing pad mandrel. Once we got that figured out, it worked great.
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Both Alex, my Argosy, and I are kids from Versailles, Ohio!
This is probably old thinking of several years ago when all this polishing stuff started coming up but I use a heavy duty DeWalt 7" polisher set at 1,000 RPM - never had a problem with burning. In fact yesterday I decided to get after the old WBCCI stickers that I've been messing with for a year and a half and just ran the polisher over and over that sticker to basically grind it off - got hot but no burning.
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