This specimen was my first work in Blender for a long time - I will try to post some of my later works... later. But it does give an idea of how to build thing in the Blender Catmull-Clark box-modeling method.
Good luck with the printer - you can of course have it made by others, but if you really need to make many things buying the printer yourself could be the cheapest solution. Also... you can start printing for other to have you r expenses covered.