Steel is one of the most popular materials used for making frames for cubicles. It’s not as lightweight as aluminum, but is cheaper per pound (although the price for steel is very volatile). In an office application, a cubicle doesn’t really have to be “high performance”. It just needs to be sturdy, dent/scratch resistant, and not too heavy to move when necessary. This means costly specialized alloys aren’t really required. Steel meets all the criteria necessary for making top quality cubicles that will last for decades. This material is also highly resistant to corrosion if it is powder coated.
What is powder coating? It’s a process of applying electro-statically charged dry paint to a metal surface. The paint is pigmented resin (plastic) in powdered form. One cool thing about powder coating is that you can spray the fluidized powder at the front of an object and wind up with paint on the back of the object. That’s because the electrostatic charge between the surface and the powder acts like a magnet to pull the “overspray” that flows past the object back onto the metal. Here’s an explanation of how this process works along with diagrams. After the powder is stuck to the metal frame, it is baked or cured in an industrial oven at high temperatures to make the coating permanent.