marinemaster
Flashlight Enthusiast
Economic reasons.
Why is titanium not standard?
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leon2245
Flashlight Enthusiast
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Energizer made one of their night strikes with a magnesium alloy body.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007LL3MJW/?tag=cpf0b6-20
I do realise that this is not what you meant to say, but this is the funniest thing I've read all day.
Based solely on this table of densities, I have concluded that the best material to make torches (or anything really) out of is lithium. Clearly this is the way forward. 
Going back to the OP's original question, I think there are two points really, one of which has been lost. One is why Aluminium is generally preferred over Titanium, which has been answered. The other is, given that plenty of people still like Ti in spite of its lathe-consuming obesity problem and apparent tendency to catch fire if you so much as look at it wrong, why is it only ever available in limited runs? The answer to that is marketing: artificial limitation of supply, which makes it more likely they will sell out and return a profit. Otherwise, with an ongoing production run and limited demand, there is a risk that not enough would sell to make back the money invested into making them.
Going back to the OP's original question, I think there are two points really, one of which has been lost. One is why Aluminium is generally preferred over Titanium, which has been answered. The other is, given that plenty of people still like Ti in spite of its lathe-consuming obesity problem and apparent tendency to catch fire if you so much as look at it wrong, why is it only ever available in limited runs? The answer to that is marketing: artificial limitation of supply, which makes it more likely they will sell out and return a profit. Otherwise, with an ongoing production run and limited demand, there is a risk that not enough would sell to make back the money invested into making them.
That is just not true.
There is very little difference in weight between a high end Aluminium and Titanium frame for road bikes at least. These days, most manufacturers use carbon for their high end models, but if you go back 15 years or so, you'll find that many high end bikes had Aluminium frames with similar weights to today's carbon and titanium frames.
gunga
Flashaholic
Yep. Most of that difference in weight is likely the components.
Magnesium is used in car rims and aircraft engines, too. Not such a big fire hazard in solid bulk quantities.
If you try to find prices of titanium metal, all I can find are various shapes & alloys, most with a price in 6-20 US$ / pound range. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that price of the base metal isn't much of a problem. I can understand the cost of "difficult to machine" though...
At least you are missing how company economics work. Companies don't count dollars, they count percentages. Let's say that the aluminium for a certain flashlight costs 10 cents and the titanium for the same flashlight costs 1 dollar. So, the difference is 90 cents, or a tenfold increase. Once all middle men have added their 50% profit margins, the price have gone to (let's say) 1 dollar for aluminium, and 10 dollars for titanium. This was for the base metal only.
