This is a good question and I was thinking about posting nearly the same thing about 2 hours ago! Some simple guidelines on this.
Maximum sustained output will depend some on outside temperature I think and a little bit on the materials in the casting (But that doesn't have great effect). In my experience polyester and epoxy and other resins Ive used will warp before the wire burns up, I've never had that happen with vinyl ester/ATH.
My experience so far would say not to push 17g wire over ab out 12 amps sustained.
14 g wire... 20 - 25 amps
15 g, 18-20
so when folks build say our 10' machine with 17g wire (which I now suggest they use 16g because it will fit), I tell them to watch it - if they see anything over 600W sustained it needs to furl earlier.
Using the larger disk magnets in our design and winding with 15g gives some safety factor, to date I've not seen one of those burn out.
As flux has pointed out - a lot of folks worry a great deal about better ways to cool the machine. I dont believe that having holes in the coils... mixing in Aluminum powder, leaving the coils somewhat exposed to the air etc etc will have much impact -as flux has pointed out, I^2 (heat is related to current squared) will catch up to you fast no matter what you do). Fact is - this basic design will usually hold together fine down to about 60% efficiency (and I expect most alternators won't tolerate much worse than that no matter what the design). So long as we keep them above that at maximum rated power and furl before, or at that point things should be fine.
Most burnouts I see are documented to have been producing a good bit more power than I would feel comfortable with considering the wire in the stator.