I hope everyone's Independence Day is only celebrated with intentional BANGS & POPS!! 
Here is a little video made while working on the River light. This is the making of the test piece shown at the end of that video. I did keep this one short!!! Enjoy! Dan.
must be awesome to have this kind of tools! thx for sharing
You have quite the knack for narrating. Thanks for sharing again.
Ok Mr TexasLumens. You’ve had your fun now back to work. 
Wax would be used, I assume if one wanted to produce something like a flashlight by casting. I think these Chinese lights are all actually made on a lathe.
It would be interesting to see how long it takes a well-programmed NC lathe to make a Sipik SK68 or such. When I looked at a textbook on NC programming in a college book store, it discussed the inertia of the tool and holder, implying that the tools can move quickly. I imagine that aircraft alloy Al can be cut faster than that video and that not much time is wasted between cuts. Its high heat conductivity helps, but pure Al with the highest conductivity is probably too soft to machine quickly.
I think the TrustFire Z8 Review: TrustFire Z8 - XM-L Flood-to-Throw, must take several times as long, in stainless steel.
Wow a wax flashlight…I want a blue one
How is this tool called? And with what is it programmed?
ok Ok OK!!! I know, just had to mess with your head a minute!
Thanks for watching my movie review!! Ha! Dan.
Hi Fritz,
Yes sir, IF you wanted to cast a light that would be where to begin. Casting lights would push the cost far far out of reach for most buyers.... there certainly would be no Bargain lights.
With live tooling on a CNC lathe the longest time for any individual part on a SK68 would most likely come in under a minute. The machines that do this have what is known as a bar feeder on them that holds usually up to 20' of material, a catch basket that the parts fall into when cut off the stock, 8 to 16 different tools loaded and off they go. I program one of these for an oil company about once a month, I'll see if they will let me do a little video on my next visit. Even being in Stainless... the Z8 I suspect would cut faster as the job would require several less tools. This particular machine I am speaking of has a maximum linear travel speed of 2250 IPM. That's not a typo... 2250 IPM. 
How fast you cut any material is figured in SFPM. Surface feet per minute. You can... and everyone does.... stray away from the standard but that is where we usually start. Spindle speed, tool size, tool coating, depth of cut, type of stock... Ti, Aluminum, Brass.... and the desired finish all plays into how fast things are cut. I program for a dental company that cuts nothing but Titanium.... With their machines, I program to cut Titanium faster than 99% of the shops cut Aluminum.
"Pure" aluminum is worthless for machining. It would be like cutting window calk right out of the tube.
Thanks for watching the video!! Dan.
I learned and used some simple machining in school, but that was a long tine ago and I have not seen any NC machining done. I even worked briefly with tantalum and platinum.
The reason pure aluminum would be interesting is for cooling of the led. I have a Maratac Copper CR123 light. The copper is mostly a novelty, but it must also make it cool better. I suppose it is not pure copper as that would be too gooey too, wouldn’t it?
According to Richard Feynman’s lecture, as a machine is scaled up or down in size the rate for a given mechanical stress increase as the scale decreases, so the linear speed stays the same. For example, if all else were equal, one would expect the maximum piston speed of a small engine to be about the same as that of a large one. That would apply to the speed with which the tool can move, if the size of the machine is scaled along with the size of the work.
The cutting speed may scale similarly but I am not sure what limits are.
Yes sir. Pure copper, or what is called 101OFEC or 101 Oxygen Free Electronic Copper is like cutting bubble gum... I term it impossible although I know a gent that freezes it, works it, re-freezes it etc... ??? Why he needs that I'm not sure. You can take a hammer and about work this like clay.
For Machining C-145 Tellurium copper is my favorite. It cuts as close to brass as I can find. Stinks a little without coolant but not too bad.
All fun! Dan.
Hi Werner,
A blue one it is!.... I'll get that done right after I figure out how to make the wax conductive! Ha!
That was just a braze on carbide, right hand cutting tool in the video... nothing fancy at all. That machine is a manual lathe that was cutting the wax so the programming is... "Put hand on wheel...spin...hopefully in the right direction!! 
I was using the power feed when cutting the wax. ... .005" per revolution 460 RPM. That gives a nice finish to that wax. It can be done a lot faster but speed simply isn't everything. Thanks for watching the video.
Dan.