u/Motocampingtime

I've read on here and elsewhere that most modern leather seat options, unless specified, are going to be polyurethane sealed or treated with some other plastic. Because of this, there is a consensus that conditioning the seats is like putting hand lotion on while wearing gloves. I get that for new leather this is true, but what about leather that is 5~10 years old? Would years of use and baking in the sun dry/wear the leather even if it is coated or not really; how would you detail or treat the seats to make sure they hold up better?

Does anybody have any first hand experience on if a cleaner and conditioner helps with older coated seats? I'm asking for a new to me lexus RX with Rioja red leather seats. They are not the synthetic nuluxe but also not the premium semi-aniline. They show some wear and creasing and I'd like to keep them nice and crack free for as long as possible. Any insights or personal experience is greatly appreciated.

I've read on here and online that most modern leather seat options, unless specified, are going to be polyurethane sealed or treated with some other plastic. Because of this, there is a consensus that conditioning the seats is like putting hand lotion on while wearing gloves. I get that for new leather this is true, but what about leather that is 5~10 years old? Would years of use and baking in the sun dry/wear on the leather even if it is coated or not really? How would you detail or treat the seats to make sure they hold up better?

Does anybody have any first hand experience on if a cleaner and conditioner helps with older seats? I'm asking in regard to a new to me lexus RX with Rioja red leather seats. They show some wear and creasing and I'd like to keep them nice and crack free for as long as possible. Any insights or personal experience is greatly appreciated.

I'd like to do some treatment to my new to me leather seats. In the brochure, the seat option is listed as leather but not the premium semi-aniline option. I have heard/read this means the leather is coated with polyurethane to seal it. The seats show some wear and creasing, but otherwise look pretty good. I view this as a minor form of preventative maintenance as the seats in my last car had creases turn to cracks that turned to tears over the life of the vehicle (this was vinyl though). They are also perforated leather in the front if that changes anything.

Where I'm confused is that people say the PU coating blocks the leather from absorbing or losing any oils and conditioners. But surely over years of use and exposure to heat the leather will still dry/wear under the coating? Does anyone have any first hand experience of how the coated leather holds up without any conditioning or if conditioning seemed to actually do anything to coated leather seats? I get not conditioning a new coated seat, but what about one that's over 7 years old?

My aim is to keep the seats in the car nice, but I also don't want to apply a bunch of products that don't do anything. Thanks for the help!

Hello, I've worked with some pulsed lasers, microscopy stages, f-theta lenses, and microscopes for a little time now; but would like to know more about building a serious system now that I have a 2 axis galvo scanner. This would ideally be for laser micro-machining or activation of some MEMS devices. I think I have a decent direction, but want to be sure I'm not totally missing the plot on some important details here.

I have read that the principle behind scanning microscopy is to image the scanner position through a lens relay to the back focal plane of the objective. It seems for best detail, this is done first through a scan lens and then to a tube lens of a high focal length ratio to also expand the beam. My question are:

How do I best introduce this beam to the imaging path of the microscope to not horribly impact quality? I envision the laser coming after the epi path so that I can still use fluorescence or other filters. If I use a cube beam splitter this eliminates ghosting but will have a nasty back reflection straight to the imaging sensor? I'd also like to have much higher image transmission than laser reflection as I normally need to attenuate my lasers. Is a 90:10 or a 70:30 a practical choice? Or are dichroics/harmonic beam splitters a better option for say 355nm,532nm, or 1064/1030nm?

If I want to shrink or expand the beam spot size/focal depth I would normally just change beam expansion rations, but as that is tied to the tube lens and scan lens should I literally just have an aperture after the laser tube lens to chop the expanded beam to a smaller size?

I understand the importance of having a high quality scan lens for flatness, but I am not using the laser for anything like confocal imaging. Since I do not really need to push perfect diffraction limited spotsize or perfect PSF, do I absolutely need to purchase a tube lens or would an appropriate focal length achromatic doublet do just as well?

Finally, depending on application I may want to use a variety of objectives from different manufactures for different experiments. How sensitive is the system to having the image of the scanner be slightly off at the back focal plain? Will it make it unusable or just need calibrated objective by objective?

Thank you!!!