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My dusty memory seems to drag up tensile strength. Steel alloys dont need the diameters of aluminium alloys. Many steel tubing available in the 1970's and 80's was as thin as 0.9mm with butts of 0.3 (Tange Champion No.1/ Columbus SL etc) with tube diameters of 26mm.
The equivalent aluminium alloy tube would have to be larger to achieve the same strength but would then add the natural properties of aluminium - light weight, stiffness and rigidity, this was what was needed by designers of these new fangled things.
In the 1980's tubing and lug supply were the limiting factor in what was available to the then burgeoning MTB/ ATB designer/ builders. Aluminium was easier to manipulate with no worries about nasty gasses (you cant weld 531 etc) so it was naturally the choice of material until carbon became more widely available (and incidentally its an environmental nightmare!). The availability of specialist aluminium tubing rocketed along with the MTB.
If you want to then market your product, you'll obviously want to copy what the market leaders were doing and release similar looking products and with aluminium being in cheap plentiful supply you have your answer.
But that answer was for about 15 - 20 years ago!
Carbon fibre is the cheap nasty wonder material that is being pumped out by the ton. If you want to sell bikes it must be carbon, anything else is old tat or chie chie hipster material.
Incidentally, a lot of those old cheap far east frames actually ride pretty well and are still around nearly 30 years on. The then top end stuff has either cracked or holed itself (Cannondale corrosion) through poor manipulation (Manitou) or failed in some spectacular way.
The equivalent aluminium alloy tube would have to be larger to achieve the same strength but would then add the natural properties of aluminium - light weight, stiffness and rigidity, this was what was needed by designers of these new fangled things.
In the 1980's tubing and lug supply were the limiting factor in what was available to the then burgeoning MTB/ ATB designer/ builders. Aluminium was easier to manipulate with no worries about nasty gasses (you cant weld 531 etc) so it was naturally the choice of material until carbon became more widely available (and incidentally its an environmental nightmare!). The availability of specialist aluminium tubing rocketed along with the MTB.
If you want to then market your product, you'll obviously want to copy what the market leaders were doing and release similar looking products and with aluminium being in cheap plentiful supply you have your answer.
But that answer was for about 15 - 20 years ago!
Carbon fibre is the cheap nasty wonder material that is being pumped out by the ton. If you want to sell bikes it must be carbon, anything else is old tat or chie chie hipster material.
Incidentally, a lot of those old cheap far east frames actually ride pretty well and are still around nearly 30 years on. The then top end stuff has either cracked or holed itself (Cannondale corrosion) through poor manipulation (Manitou) or failed in some spectacular way.
