Cree star board heat transfer

Back in the early days of the excitement over the Cree XR-E, somebody on here examined a Cree star board and determined that the heat transfer was really poor due to a layer of non-conductive material between the heat pad and the alu core. Just wondering whether things have improved at all with Cree aftermarket stars (so that they're as good as Seoul stars), or do they still suffer from the same problem? Particularly interested in what comes from Cutter, since that still seems to be the most obvious source for these LEDs. If I get more LEDs should I get them mounted on stars or put up with the extra trouble of using bare emitters for better heat transfer?

If You dont mind the additional work: emitter
its the only way You can be sure that the thermal path is perfect

(there have been Seoul stars with an air gap between slug and board, or reverse placed ones, or ...)

yellow said:

(there have been Seoul stars with an air gap between slug and board, or reverse placed ones, or ...)

Click to expand...

Though of course those were the dodgy aftermarket ones (I'll not mention the name of the company selling them - most here will know who). The factory Seoul stars have perfectly good heat transfer (lower thermal resistance between junction and star than between junction and slug for a Lux3), so I have no problem with using those, even though plain Seoul emitters are easier to work with than Crees.