Frank Krygowski wrote:

Today there was a guy with a kid bike and
the saddle post was stuck in the pipe.
He said it was because the frame was of
"lättmetal", which is literally "light
metal" but Google translate gives "alloy".
To me it looked like aluminium but then
again I haven't seen anything. Is there
anything known as "light metal" in the bike
frame world that I've missed?

It almost certainly was an aluminum alloy.
In English, the technical definition of
"alloy" is a combination of metals, or in
some cases including a bit of a non-metal
like carbon. But in English bicycling slang,
"alloy" often refers to aluminum alloys.

A bit more detail: Pure aluminum isn't useful
for bike parts or anything else requiring
strength. It's light, but quite soft and
weak. But if you add a couple percent copper,
zinc, or other metals to aluminum, you can
get aluminum alloys whose strength to weight
ratio is better than common steels.
That's what lots of bike components are
made of.

Steel is an alloy of iron plus carbon and
small amounts of other metals.
Titanium alloys exist and are occasionally
used in some unusual bike parts. Brass is
a copper alloy, and I suppose you might find
it in some bicycle bells. But again, in the
bicycle world if a part is described as made
of "alloy" it's generally an aluminum alloy.

OK, thanks for answers, makes sense to me.

BTW that shouldn't be "I haven't seen
anything", it should be EVERYTHING of
course. Hypoxia.

--
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573