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Is much known about how organized the manufacture of armour was at the time? I'm wondering how industrialized it was. Did they make 50 sets at a time, all parts somewhat interchangeable or was each set unique? Was the manufacture controlled by the crown or could just anyone with the metal-working skills announce that they were making armour if they could gain a contract?
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The armoury at Graz in Austria has fairly good records of which shops/armourers made much of the material there, theres fairly good records from the Greenwich armoury as well. As municipalities were more often contracting for arms and armour for thier armouries theres some surviving municiple contract paper work ect. Munitions armour was being made in large quantities to keep the large proto-national armies that fought the seemingly never ending Wars of Religion and the other conflicts that raged across Europe during this period. Fine armour production was on the wane and made in progresively smaller quantites as the upper classes stepped away from miltiary service and a proffessional officer class ( and a heavy reliance on paid mercenary soldiers in many of the armies involved ) increasingly took over leading military units. Armouring guilds who to some extent had been in charge of quality control of thier members product ( to keep prices up as much as anything else ) in the past, with the growing proto-national character of European armies now having state and city armouries ( rather than a private caslte armoury in the manner of the middle ages ) the various states and cities being munniciple entities were in charge of and concerned with quaility control of the contracted arms and armour they took in. Much 16th and 17th century armour that has what appears to be a series of makers stamps are in fact various control and inspection stamps from municiple armouries where arms and armour to be dispensed in time of crisis ( Graz for example ) were taken in and stored.