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Disappointed that the first comment isn’t, “May the Torx be with you”
That may have been the actual post title I was looking for.
These aren’t the post titles you’re looking for… 👋
I changed it after the fact but I went with torque instead of Torx because it seemed to make more sense. IYKYK.
Nah, I was just kiddin’!
This was a great post and fun to comment with
Can we all agree that flathead should be outlawed and Phillips needs to get phased out with a quickness
Why are there so many fasteners 8min : https://youtu.be/5cA9bZRHpZE
Wait what should the standard be?
Torx.
Googles it.
Omg, it has 6 sides, that means it’s bestagon
Square (Robertson) and/or torx depending on application. Square should be for everyday things and torx should be for anything mechanical, yes I know there is a big gray area in the middle there, but flat head, phillips, and hex need to go.
I have never in my life seen such a screw. Hexagon is the shit here, when it isnt Phillips. Maybe coming from Ikea, I don’t know. Is this format a (popular) US thing?
Ya Ikea standardized on hex because it’s cheap to mass produce. It definitely strips though.
Torx has slowly been gaining popularity in the US for a decade or two now, but sadly Phillips is still pretty popular and hex is pretty common also, you will see the square/Robertson screws a lot in electrical panels and in cabinetry but not super common at the hardware store.
Honest question, why not torx across the board? What do square do well that’s not covered by torx?
Robertson is tapered, so you just have to hit the hole somewhat and it’ll guide itself in real easy. Torx is fickle to line up and orientate.
The way I see it, anything with a square bit can be done by with a hand held screw driver, and anything with a torx bit should probably be torqued to a certain amount and/or be used with a screw gun. Square/Robertson bits are used super often in things like electrical panels and electronics. They are becoming pretty common for cabinetry also. I doubt you’ll see a torx screw in cabinets.
Thank you for replying. Robertson screws are not common in Scandinavia - at least I’ve never seen one IRL. I use torx for everything, never had an issue with hand screwing them, which is why I asked. But I’m not an expert or professional, just a home owner that tries to DIY as much as I can.
Not having to deal with stripped screws is the biggest plus for me, I hate having to remove a Philips or flathead screw that someone else put in some hard-to-reach location that can’t be turned without breaking. (Which happens surprisingly often, actually.)
I don’t get the problem with flathead, for household applications it seems the most superior because I can use literally anything in my house to drive the screw (butter knife, credit card, a housekey)
plus almost every size of flathead screwdriver can fit in almost every size of flathead screw.
No offense, but you haven’t unscrewed/screwed enough slot screws if you don’t see why they’re worse in every way. The criteria for a good screw isn’t that you don’t have to have the correct tool. The bits are $0.99!
I unscrew a single screw and whether it’s a light switch or an electronic device, I’m already annoyed. Even if you use a flathead screwdriver that fits perfectly, it will un-center and slip out, whether you use a hand bit/screw driver or a drill.
You can use everything, but everything works badly. Even a fitting screwdriver will just randomly jump out after half a turn and scratch whatever you’re working on.
Its all fun and games until the Canadians show up.
As an American, we made a mistake in not adopting those. Torx or whatever isn’t even as good.
Torx is better than whatever this Canadian abomination is. You’d only put pressure on the corners in a realistic setting. These would get rounded so fast unless they are massive, like on some differentials or gearbox oil drains.
This guy mechanics
Indeed torx is so good because it attempts to maximize the surface where pressure is applied to. This is good on smaller sized bolts that are more prone to being rounded, but especially amazing when removing bolts that may have been exposed and potentially corroded
Hex was for that before.
Yeah, hex is very nice but torx is improvement over it.
I have not checked on it, but I’m like 97.25% sure wood screws jumped from Philips to torx however because of corrosion resistance. Hex is very easy to round already as is on smaller sizes, but even more so if the head is exposed to elements and corroded. Of course material matters a lot, but even stainless corrodes over time.
Torx has to be very, very bad condition for it to round, it’s more likely for the screw to snap
Sorry for drunk rambling but I really like bolts. And bearings for what it’s worth
Curious how “really like bolts. And bearings!” is working out on your Tindr profile?
Luckily I’ve never had a tinder profile. And my wife liked my nuts so we’re good
Never had or seen a stripped Robertson, they are robust AF. Don’t ask me the physics. (They go deep into the screw head because of the simple shape, maybe that has part of it. And they are tapered, it’s not just a square, so they manage to grip the bit like a mofo. You don’t cam out of a Robertson.)
I’ve snapped so many Robertson bits in my life. Screws are fine.
1 5/8" cement board screws
They used to be Robertson. They switched to Torx.
Night and day difference
Like you said, they do grip like a mofo, and with an impact driver, the bits snap.
I tried dozens of different brands of bits. Even paid top dollar for special Milwaukee ones.
I was at a point where I had to pre-drill and counter sink the screws because I was breaking too many bits.
I could probably drive a torx head one through a board
Hey, if it works it works.
It works, but badly. All my homies hate cam-out and love torx.
It works great for it’s intended purpose which is torque limiting.
You’d think that they would have switched to Pozidriv.
Why? Torx is better in every way. If you are going to change, why half ass it to Phillips 2.0
Backwards compatibility
Pozidriv is intentionally not backwards compatible, and one of the biggest problems it has is looking enough like Phillips that people assume it must be compatible, use a mismatched screw and driver, and strip a head.
Which is why it sucks. I go to work and I see a cross cut, I’m going to use my Phillips head of appropriate size to pull it out or put it in. Does pozidrive have any indication it’s not Phillips? I’ve honestly never seen one. I might be working on brand new stuff or 60 year old stuff.
I don’t have any pozidrive bits but I have two sets of long torx, some double sided torx for my hand driver, and a bunch of little torx bits in my bag to hand out to the kid that came to his first day of work with nothing but a #2 Phillips.
Yes, the head is visually distinctive from Phillips, with four smaller cuts in between the main ones.
Good to know if I ever see one.
I think it’s pretty likely that you’ve seen loads and never known they were different. The difference is small enough that you wouldn’t realise it was significant until you were told:
You’re right - Torx is definitely a better option. I just mentioned Pozidriv because people seem to love Phillips head so much for whatever reason, so Pozidriv seems like a logical increment from there.
(@Dan not shitting on you, i just really hate Phillips)
Next logical increment… Gotta say ain’t nothing logical about Phillips/posidrive bullshit,
Robertson drive was around when Henry Ford decided to use Phillips on his cars. Robertson was more expensive to licence the patents(Phillips was cheap cause people thought it was shit)
God damned Nazis fucking everything up(Ford was a Nazi(ish) and a real piece of shit). Maximizing profits over everything else screws everything up as we are seeing right now, but sometimes it doesn’t just fuck up the here and now, but like Phillips, it just keeps fucking everything up for more than 100 years.
“Let’s make a drive that has an angle to it so that it will strip out super easily and destroy the fastener(don’t tell me Phillips is great because it limits torque, it doesn’t without destroying the head so bad you might not be able to remove it)” said no good engineer ever.
Turns out the laws of physics and geometry are the same everywhere.
Even in fictional universes that have wizards in space with swords made of light?
