Cyccommute says:
Again, too simplistic. If you start with raw ores, steel is far cheaper to make than aluminum. Both are as easily recyclable and recycling costs about the same. Aluminum just happens to be cheaper to make from recycled materials than from raw ore.
This statement is so inaccurate, it's almost hilarious. The bayer process, is a much more expensive process. Extracting aluminum from bauxite is a more expensive process than the extraction of iron from its ore to make steel. This expense is further exacerbated by the Hall-Heroult aluminum refinement process, where aluminum ions are reduced at the cathode (pots) to become the aluminum metal. Alternatively, recycling aluminum is cheaper and less complexed than recycling steel. Since iron (Fe) has a melting point of 1535 C and aluminum has a meting point of 660 C. It becomes painfully obvious to us all as to the actual reason that industrialists would prefer to use aluminum as a bicycle frame and not steel. It takes a lot more energy to get to 1535 C than 660 C . Therefore, simply put. It's cheaper!
Steel is heavier but the extra costs of transportation is minimal.
Poppycock!
Steel is much heavier than Aluminum. Raw materials and their products ship by weight. Therefore, it costs more to ship steel than aluminum. Industrial profiteers understand this fact, and make modifications, accordingly. Even if the savings were just a a few pennies on the dollar, the bicycle industry would stand to save billions over the years, simply by making the transition from steel to aluminum. That's the real reason that we're all riding aluminum bikes. It's because of industrial profiteering, it's not due to bicyclists' taste in frames changing. It most certainly is not due to the bicycle industry wanting to provide cyclists with a better and more efficient bicycles.
I remember when most bicyclists initially suspected that aluminum frames had their misgivings and they had grave doubts about the future of aluminum bicycle frames. As it turns out, they're suspicions were valid, but the bicycle industry thwarted their predictions, with cosmetic engineering and technology.
It's related to the market. Most cyclists don't want a bike that weighs 3 times more. They want a light weight bike. That's why carbon is beating the pants off aluminum which beat the pants off steel before it. Steel has a higher density than aluminum which has a higher density than carbon. Simple chemistry. Yes, you have to use more aluminum to make a bike that is as strong as the steel one (as well as using more carbon to accomplish the same thing) but the amount of extra aluminum isn't 3 times as much so the aluminum bike is lighter.
In most instances, there's only two to four pounds difference between a racing road bike made of carbon and a racing road bike made of aluminum or steel. I don't know where you got your information. No modern-day bike has ever weighed three times more than another!
If the industry made more chromoly steel bicycles available, instead of saturating the market with aluminum bikes, you would see many more chromoly steel bikes on the road today.
I've had 4 frames fail on me. Two steel and two aluminum. The aluminum didn't
'break', it cracked and tore as I'd expect aluminum to do. It isn't brittle.
The steel frames did 'break' as in fracture. They didn't bend, they didn't warn
of impending failure, they just broke. I'd expect that out of steel because
steel is a brittle material. I've broken aluminum parts and steel parts,
the same mechanism held in each case. Aluminum tears and is more of a slow
failure. Steel (axles mostly) goes 'snap' and is in two pieces.
I don't know what planet your steel comes from, but steel almost always tears or bends, before it breaks. That's not something we can say about aluminum. Aluminum has a very low yield capacity, making it more susceptible to breaking or snapping. To that extent, you have the properties of the two metals, reversed.
Thus far I've owned about about a dozen bicycles in my entire life. I've never had one to fail on me. All of my bikes have been made of steel. I currently own a Trek 7.5FX. It's frame is aluminum and it's doing quite fine.
I see lots and lots of them. At the co-op I work at the number of failed
aluminum frames is about equivalent to the number of failed steel frames. We
don't see a lot of very old (pre 1990) aluminum bikes because the majority of
bikes made before 1990 were steel. From 1990 to around 2000, the ratio is
closer to 1:1 and the number of aluminum bikes we see reflects that. It also
reflects advances in the technology to produce aluminum frames and the market
demand for a lighter bike.
Well that hasn't ever been my experience. I've always seen many more failed aluminum frames than steel frames. I've also always heard more rumors about associates aluminum frames failing. Haven't heard much about steel frames failing. The only type of frame failure steel bikes seem to have is derived from the result of accidents.
- Slim