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Stock ones and the cheaper aftermarket variety are made out of mild steel.  The nice aftermarket ones are Cro Moly or (lemme see if I can spell this right) Chrome Molybendum.  Cro Moly is a far superior material.

Mild Steel (1018, 1024, 1040, 1045) has a tensile strength of/around 30,000 psi. Chromoly (4130, 4140, 4340) has a tensile strength of/around 60,000 psi. Twice the strength. It isn't however lighter. Builders and fabricators like myself use around 1/2 as much to get the same strength, and there is where your weight savings comes from.

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The filler material should be atleast as strong as the base material. You don't want to weld 60,000 psi tensile strengh chromoly with 30,000 psi mild steel wire. Otherwise your weld will become the weakest part of the fabrication. The geometry of many steel fabrications already causes the welds to be the highest stress areas, so they need to be atleast as strong as the base material.

Personally I won't touch Chromoly. A couple of people have asked me to shorten their aftermarket swingarms, but I refused to do it since I do not have a tig welder. I personally feel that if the design of a component is critical enough to justify using chromoly, then it should be tig welded.

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