Ok, so this pertains to both extruded aluminum tube and formed steel tubing of any profile – round, square, rectangular, hexagonal, you get the idea.

In the old days, tube cutting was an expensive proposition and not all that accurate.  You’d have loose tolerances and a lot of tolerance stack if the parts had to be unfixtured.  Not any more.  Laser tube cutters are amazing.  You end up with parts that can be put together like Legos.  I mean, you get 0.005″ accuracy on on the entire part.  No more centering issues, no more mis-aligned assemblies and the process is fast and not labor intensive.

Modern laser cutters can cut 1″ thick steel and 1/2″ thick aluminum.  For thinner materials, the cut is usually very clean.  For weldments consisting of extruded aluminum tubes, this means smaller, stronger welds.  If you’re in the bicycle business, you probably use this process exclusively for both prototyping and production.  Production laser cutting can employ tube auto-feeders to make precision cut extruded product all day long (and even all night long for lights-out operation).  Btw, you can also find machining information on a related machining blog we manage:

If you don’t believe me, watch this video.  I find this absolutely amazing.