Mark Lookabaugh
After they retooled the original molds, how did they get them back in shape to reproduce the first version again?
There's to kinds of "retooling" in the injection moulding industry.
There's "production run" tooling. Thene there is "product change" tooling.
To create the moulds, there's usually a master set of tooling generated whic his the master from which the production tooling can be cut. These are typically steel blocks which have index points where they mate to plastic injection ports, and quite often, water cooling channels). The tooling is then fit into the injection moulding machines and a production run. When the run is complete, the mould are pulled out for the next run of moulds.
Back in the day, the tool and die makers would plan for where the ersion of the moulding process could be cleaned up to increase the life of the moulds.
But, all moulds wear.
Sometimes that wear is factored in and that determines the number of moulds cut. Sometimes it is not. In our modern era where CNC machinery can help automate cutting of moulds, a factry can achieve some ecomomies. Like the master mould model can be digital and not physical, so the master des not suffer from pantograph wear. Also, if your process engineering has identified that you need to make 88,000 "shots" to get the correct number of shots through QC, you can get 8 CNC-cut moulds rather than 10, perhaps.
To keep this complicated, there are technological changes in the injection moulding machines themselves. So, when we read that Company X has bought the tooling frmerly used by Company Q, it's not always obvious whether that includes moulding machines or just the moulds, or the whle kit and kaboodle.
This industrial stuff gets deep pretty quick.