RV your way beyond Fugazi's tuts ;-) and I don't think Silo can do anything blender cant lol

at leather-guy is a couple of addons that can help ~ mesh lint will find over 90% of problems in any mesh (think its in trunk now not sure,google it)

and there was/is a addon to make sure the mesh is ready for 3d printing (no internal faces/watertight etc) "think" it had something to do with shapeways [ little interest in 3d printing but don't like to fall too far behind lol ] try a search at blenderartists for more info

(seen the post on poser too so) there is lots of ways to get what you want  the displacement map is probably the LAST way I'd choose although defiantly easier lol

if you want to do a quick sketch I'll have a go at making the mesh for you and a few words etc on how I did it [so you can do the hard ones ] bear in mind if you draw a X mm line and your printer can only do X+1 mm we'll have a problem rofl