I had read an earlier discussion on a similar case but I have one doubt about the 'infinite distance' between the two halves. I have seen two cases.

CASE 1: Here, the two mold halves remain attached together with the help of different pins at the open state. So, in this case, the maximum mold open distance can be measured after applying appropriate mates and resulting in the fully open state.

CASE 2: This is a typical two-plate mold. In this case, the mold halves are free to move and are not hold together at the stage of opening. I think this is why the maximum open distance is said to be infinity but the distance remains limited because of the limit of the overall machine length.

So, my question is, how to calculate the maximum open distance for this case? Is the infinite distance correct for this case? if not, what does an infinite distance case look like?