i don’t think anyone is/was seriously considering copper for the body of the light, as you say, perhaps later. it would be a really heavy light!
As a usable light, a copper Q8 is a joke, twice as heavy with only moderate better performance. But on the shelf it will steal the show! 
Damn, every time I see a bunch of updates I come to check to see if we are any closer to seeing this thing. Ahh well…
+1000…
Well Tom showed us the looks can be achieved without an extremely heavy result 
Yup, aluminum is fine until someone makes one with a carbon fiber outer shell. I don’t even want to consider the price of that.
deleted, I'll refer to the next posts, I think those end up being the issue. But heating up faster isn't necessarily a sign of bad conduction. Can be good conduction, low,-mass, or no place for the heat to go, I think this falls somewhat under the 3rd.
The fact that it only heats up in the head is indeed the interesting data point. That's pointing to real delta T across the body itself. I'm not sying SS ins't worse either, but as someone pointed out above, it's just not the biggest limitation. I mean aluminum has what 20 times better conductivity (maybe 10 maybe 30, I forget, but much), and the SS lights don't get 10 times worse performance. This probably means by the time you have aluminum, there's really no gain or loss to reasonable modifications of the host beyond the shelf shape, or even by going to better conductors.
Discolor like copper - that’s the best thing about copper in my books. That it develops a look that’s uniquely yours with the passage of time.
I have to say the math thread I refered to, the guy just modeled things like layers of an egg. In that case area is huge so delta T's stay small. It probably didn't take into acount the long thin cross section needed to transfer heat down the handle, and this does give access to more air then for cooling. And yeah, as you say Tom, for the same weight and strength this might be thinner for some metals. That all seems to add up to the missing difference. On the other hand, it keeps the handle cool to hold!
How can I subscribe to this thread and receive email updates on new posts?
Go to the first post in the thread. Scroll to the bottom of that first post ans click on the subscribe link
That is an incredibly weird place to put the subscribe button. Right between “Rude” and “Mark Spam ”
Thank you for helping me find it. =D
If the parts are reasonably flat that gap is very small. I do scrape off burrs from the edges of mcpcbs to be sire they seat well, but even in the worst case that gap is small. An air gap is a different matter. Air has horrible heat transfer unless it circulates.
Hence the purpose of afore mentioned thermal paste. It’s intended to fill in the microscopic surface irregularities and displace the air between the two surfaces, as it is a much better conductor than air.
On the other topic, if you feel the light getting warm in the hand, it means the body/head acting as a heat sink is working quite good. The more heat you feel, the cooler the LED is.
Ironically, just posting to this (or any) thread by default gets you subscribed automatically. So, once your question was asked, you should have had no more need of an answer. 
All major updates are accompanied with a (temporary) title change, text at beginning of OP and a link to the post from where on the update can be discussed.
I’d like at least one of these bad boys. :nerd_face:
OK - The Miller sold me on this bake'n madness - I admit I thought it was a little nutty at first. This is just like how ramping went - at first I thought I had no interest, but that all changed once it was implemented and I played around with it. This copper color is real nice, I brought it into work today, showed it around, and everyone who's seen it likes it.
The Q8 has a lot of fans here @work, some are already on the list. Today I also brought in my monster 34K lumens, 155 kcd - that also got a bit of attention, to say the least...
Next to an L6:
It's a 2S3P 18650 setup:
It's a Q8 X 4, then double that with XHP50's.
Insane wiring:
16x XHP-50. Hmm. That’s nice I guess.