3D sculpture to be printed, Advice needed

Hello Shapeway community,
I created this 3d sculpture for a school project and I am wondering what the optimal settings for price/result/quality are.
I was thinking about printing it in the normal 'White strong and Flexible' or polished which are strong and not to expensive.
my total budget is about $130 (shipping to Holland included) so right now it's just a matter of how thick do I have to make the walls and how big can I have my model printed. Lets say I wanted my model to be printed 150 mm high, how thick should I make the walls ?
I found the minimum of this material is 0.2 mm, but this must be way to thin obviously, but since I never held anything printed with this material I find it hard to imagen what the thickness should be. and off-course the fingers shouldn't be hollow, but would it be okay to make the arms hollow at least till it meets the hand?

And then I would like your artistic opinion, what kind of material would you think looks good for this model?

Your thoughts are appriciated, please share them

Geetings from Holland,

Ristridyn.

I believe Shapeways started in the Netherlands (Eindhoven) and has the bulk of its printers there. In any case, there is a standard shipping fee no matter where your model is printed.

I printed this model, Heron in polished White Strong and Flexible. It is about 144 mm high and is hollow with walls about 1mm thick. It is not strong but works perfectly well for what it is.

Good luck!

Thanks for your reply
Yeah I did find out about shapeways through a Dutch radioshow where the founder of Shapeways was recieved as guest.
But it appears shapeways only excists in the .com version I haven't found a dutch sub-site so I guess it doesn't matter where the bunch of printers are stationed, you pay the same shippingcosts anyway

Right now I got it 14 cm heigh (140 mm) and a wallthickness of 1.5 mm (hands are solid) and it's a couple of bucks below my budget !
So do you think 1.5 mm is thick enough?

cheers!

I too printed a figure a bit ago, about 16 cm tall on white strong and flexible polished with about 1mm walls, went well, feels sturdy enough. Hands and feet I left solid too.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6427480/SB/SBjoint.jpg

I think strong and flexible will do just fine visually, if you can afford the polished variant, I'd probably go for that.
I think most of the other materials would blow your budged if you're already close with white strong and flexible.

Ceramics would be cheapest, even if the model was solid and the shiny glaze might give it a nice finish (while covering up some detail).

good luck.

I do my dolls which are about that high in 1-2mm, with any small details like fingers solid.

I also do little charms, I always make sure my charms are 1.5mm-2mm for durability. You should be fine with 1.5-2mm in my opinion. Polish should work really nice on your sculpture as well. don't i know/seen you on deviantart?

You might have XD I go by the same name there, I alreaddy printed the model on 2 mm polished strong white and flexible it can also be found in my shop Cheers! http://ristridyn.deviantart.com/