I have made two aluminum frames, I used DEDACCIAI 7005 Aluminum. I purchased the tubes and associated frame parts from bike fab supply. This is my track bike that I built a few months ago.
This is really nice! I was never as nervous on a bike as the on the one evening I spent in the Velodrome of the UCI. Man those tracks are steep!
I used a local powdercoater, there is also a local welding shop with a heat treat oven. If I start building more Aluminum frames I might try and build an oven.
If you do end up heat-treating a frame - aluminum or steel - don't forget to cold-set it back into alignment. It will warp.
This is not to scare anyone off of heat treating. As Compositepro suggests, it's probably easier and cheaper to find an appropriate oven than you think. Cold-setting can be done to very high accuracy with just lumber, string and the cheap-but-accurate digital micrometers you can get online for ~$30USD.*
*(I strongly recommend the ones that allow you to switch between Metric, Decimal Inches, and Fractional Inches. It'll save you a lot of time when dealing with anything that some {probably American} dipshit specified in fractional inch measurements. ...likely because he {it was definitely a he} hadn't been informed that math had been invented, and that it was actually pretty handy.)
A proper alignment table is also probably a lot less expensive and easier to build than you'd think. It makes frame alignment a lot easier and faster, but takes up a ton of space. So unless you are aiming to make frames for money, it's probably not worth it.
I'm intrigued. How do you check a frame's alignment with lumber, string, and a micrometer?
I've meant to reply to this a bunch of times, but 1. I'm lazy 2. It's hard to give a (useful) description without images, which I don't have handy. I finally decided to punt and just link to an old blog post by Dave Moulton (Masi, Fuso, etc.) which has most of the relevant info and pictures: http://davesbikeblog.squarespace.com/blog/2007/11/16/straightening-bent-seatstays.html
Basically, you pull the string tight across the head tube and dropouts and measure the distance from taut string to seat tube on each side to check gross alignment. Once that's set, you can repeat with the BB and head tube, seat tube and head tube, etc.
Lumber is used both for leverage when bending, and to provide support to specific areas you want to bend - without creating a sharp fulcrum.
For heat-treated steel or aluminum, I suggest cold-setting the frame into alignment, letting it rest at least 24 hours, and then repeating. It tends to have more memory than you'd expect.
I was wondering if anyone new whether or not Titanium frames must be heat treated after welding like Aluminum frames? Thanks!
No. Unless you are working with some weird scrap Titanium from 20+ years ago, any Ti tubing you'll find these days is easy to weld (...assuming good anti-oxidation practices) and won't require any heat treating.
This is also true of much (...if not most) of the aluminum tubing you can buy today, as well. Most of what's labelled "7000 series" in the US doesn't require, or benefit from post-weld heat treating.
Well, if we're at Pinion, let me show you the Shredmaster!
The Frame was designed by a friend and me over the last year and has been finished last week.
Alu 7020 (Frame weight 3,7 Kg, incl. axles, no shock) Full 29er or Mullet (via Flipchip, same Geo) Pinion 6-Gear C-Line 500mm Reach 63 degree Head Angle 205 mm Travel 345 mm BB Height 440/450 mm Chainstays custom chain tensioner