I dont know why, but my customers always want to have strange things The model minimum thickness = 3mm Pre-check is ok... but... something tells me, Shapeways won´t be happy with this design ( Bounding Box Cm:15 x / 9.352 y / 8.98 z ) https://www.shapeways.com/model/3dtools/4667907/1/23?key=81f 1b434b0fe032b3f77e29b5be2635a .
Protein,- that´s right... Is there any other material / size possible? Polyamide? A miniature made of silver? Sandstone? How was this model made? .
Use strong&flexible and paint it (primer plus metal effect paint should look at least as good as the "steel"), or scale it down and print in (plated) brass. Sandstone would have the same sandcastle problem - high time for the mythical beast of Hewlett to rear its color printhead. :-/ (That photograph could be anything from a Stratasys Objet print to FDM to old-school copper wire plus modeling clay. Hmm. Found the article you copied it from, so make that "painted strong&flexible or FDM print" - most of the article talks about "sandstone" models of a strip-mined landscape with the PhD student's protein print used only for a caption)
People who print a lot of proteins get good at putting strategic bridges across points where the strings approach each other closely. To me that sounds like a PITA, and of course it doesn't work for larger structures, so I prefer to draw proteins using subsurface laser etching in glass. Which I do at http://crystalprotein.com.