No prototype yet, but I have been making some progress. You can see updates etc. here
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Here is an explanatory document that I recently updated to explain the process:
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sites.google.com]
I think it is clear in this age of self driving vehicles (ups has been doing driverless deliveries for real since may), drones, smartphones, computers etc. that the on the ground manufactured reality is severely lagging. We still have very crude garments, for instance. Vehicles are not really benefiting much from the improvements in technology wrt return on investment that they present to owners. Things like that are very real. We need to achieve a higher degree of ability to manufacture things on the ground so that we can do more things much better in the same line as wikispeed and open source ecology. The barriers there have become relatively clear to me; we need a fabrication facility that is better than you can currently get by assembling any collection of milling machines, laser cutters and 3d printers and stock parts. Especially for the price i.e. it has to have a better return on investment ratio.
I think mold sdm can be the heart of such a system. Part of the heart of the revolution.
I am proposing and working on a project that is basically for Mold SDM what the Reprap was for 3d printing: Make a basic functional machine to drag the whole process and it's potential out of the shadows and into the light of day, form a community of people that understand it's value and proceed to develop the software and hardware. This will catalyze an industry around the concept much as the reprap catalyzed the 3d consumer printer phenomenon over the last 13 years to go from zero to multi billion dollar industry.
Mold sdm is a very special process because you can make truly useful things with it; it has all the precision and material properties that you need to make a ton of highly useful things, including a much larger fraction of it's own parts than a reprap can. You could make even the stepper motors if you wanted to, with only the wiring you might need to add. Even the bearings could be hydrostatic bearings, so you can even make that part. But the main thing is that you can make the most expensive and custom parts, all the mechanical structure, with hydrostatic linear bearings for excellent long life and repeatability of motion.
