Same here... as far as off-road bikes are concerned, I think that aluminium has more practical advantages over carbon. But as always, that's a subjective thing because necessary advantages are different from person to person.
Yes CF frames are hand made - but not quite like the old days of fibreglassing... in fact, far from it. I can share these two pics below, it's 13 years old anyway and there shouldn't be distinguishing features in there as to what bike it is. In this instance, specific types of carbon sheets (pre-impregnated with resin so there's no loose fibres floating around in the air when handled) are cut by computer and is layed-up by hand with an inflatable bladder in the middle. That's where the engineering comes in (the fibre directions and sequence of layers) and in certain portions a carbon 'woven sock' is used in combination with carbon sheets. Then they are placed inside a metal mould... bladders inflated... then baked in a pressurised autoclave. Depending on the design (retail cost derived), a cheaper carbon frame can be glued together afterwards from various moulded members - OR can pop-out of the oven in one-piece if need be, but the cost of the corresponding metal mould would be murderous. The number of moulds and the autoclave curing time is the manufacturing bottle-neck when it comes to mass-production. You can have hundreds of workers laying-up and as many again working in post-moulded finishing, but if you only have ONE mould then that'll just yield 2 to 4 frames per day, depending. A word about CF... don't inhale dust or fine shavings - they don't break down or decompose. You get that in your lungs, it'll stay there for good. The cutting, filing, sanding, finishing section of a CF factory is the most hazardous department and the workers in there wear PPE like it's Chernobyl.
In contrast, "tubular" aluminium frames have no outstanding production bottle necks and so if you want to produce a hundred frames a day, the factory just has to increase staff numbers (easier said than done I know, but that what they do to meet production order deadlines). A company that produces a hundred-thousand aluminium frames per year is a small player in Taiwan or in China.
You can understand, why tubular carbon frames are so expensive. Now here's the crazy thing about CF frames - which I believe contributes unnecessarily to it's high production cost. Carbon fibre is more suitable to monocoque construction... that's the main inherent advantage of this material. Traditional bike frames on the other hand originated from tubular construction since the 1920s. Making a tubular CF bike frame these days is like building an F1 car using carbon tubular roll cages similar to 1960's F1 structural designs. Nothing wrong with that intrinsically, but it involves serpentine designs that requires complex tooling and sometimes uses even more material.
CF material is more suited for one-piece monocoque frame designs like the one shown below... which is specifically intended for Ironman or Triathlon or Time Trial (non-UCI race applications).
There are two reasons why monocoque bikes aren't mainstream (and may never be). One is because a considerable proportion of cyclists think monocoques are ugly (not this one specifically but in general)... although, I for one think they're gorgeous for this application. That, and not everyone wants to be seen riding an ostentatious 'rocket ship.' Second is monocoque frames have been banned by the UCI in their sanctioned events including the Olympics. Many reasons float around as to why, but I believe it has something to do with preserving the 'traditional double triangular" side view shape of the bicycle. This triangular bicycle image it would seem, has made such a deep mark in people's and society's psyche that it has been deemed worth protecting... technology be damned.
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