I feel like it’s a pretty common experience for a lot of us maker types- we come up with a solution to a problem, maybe we tried searching for one and came up empty, or maybe we just thought it would be fun to make from the get-go, then sometime later we stumble upon someone selling pretty much the exact thing we made and think “huh, so thats what these things are called” maybe with a touch of disappointment that your idea wasn’t as original as you thought, or maybe just intrigued because you just added another term to your vocabulary and you have a better idea what to search for next time.
Yours looks good though, It’s probably unnecessary but I’d be tempted to add like a U-shaped cradle piece to the top to help keep it in place if your computer ever gets jostled for any reason, and maybe a jam nut at the bottom to make sure it stays where you set it. Again probably totally unnecessary, but I always figure that if it’s worth doing it’s worth overdoing.
What sort of printer and filament/resin are you using? I’d worry a bit about it warping or sagging over time from the heat inside a computer. I know some materials can handle the heat better or worse than others, but I haven’t dipped my toes into 3d printing myself yet, so I may be overestimating how much of an issue it is.
And can your printer make decent screw threads, or do you have to clean them up afterwards with a tap and die or something? I’m not really up on the current state of 3d printers, but one of the first 3d printed objects I remember ever handling was back in high school 15 or so years ago. One of my teachers went to a conference where they were showing off new gadgets for computer and shop classes, and he brought back a couple 3d printed crescent wrenches for us to fondle. I remember the screws being really crunchy and they almost but didn’t quite work, so in the back of my mind I’ve always thought of functional screw threads as something 3d printers can’t quite do, so it’s wild to me if we’ve gone from barely able to make even a coarse thread with huge tolerances work to being able to make pretty fine threads with pretty tight tolerances.
Of course back then, they hadn’t even really settled on calling it “3d printing,” I remember that teacher calling it a “rapid prototyping machine” when he was telling us about it, and described it as being “like a 3d printer”
I believe when talking about naval ships, commissioning is when they enter active service, so construction probably began early 90s, maybe even late 80s, and probably a few years of designing, bidding, etc before that. And of course there were probably all of the usual idiot politicians, bean counters, stubborn assholes, sales people, etc. involved who pushed for older tech. Maybe because everything else they had worked on the old disks, maybe they were skeptical of the new tech not being robust or tested enough or wouldn’t catch on, maybe it was just cheaper, etc.
I’m willing to bet that they somehow locked themselves into using 8 inch disks in the early to mid 80s if not earlier, when the 5¼ discs were still new-ish and the 3½ were brand-new or not even available yet.