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Why wouldn’t they? It’s an efficient design, and aside from the whole force thing they seem to be working with the same physics that we are. Why wouldn’t they invent philips head screws?
Because it’s a fucking stupid design! Fuck Phillips, long live Robertson!
They strip like a mf.
This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine - it’s designed purely for automation. That’s why it’s tapered, to allow power tools to slip out before they break. That’s good for automation in the 30s, not so good for hand tools or any modern tool with a torque limiter.
You’re much better off with hex or torx, or even the square driver, which is much more tolerant of imperfect handheld tool usage.
The only reason phillips is still used is because it’s ubiquitous, it’s very much a historical oddity. It’s okay for many tasks but unfortunately the slipping out behaviour can destroy the screws very quickly.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/9903/bit-history-the-phillips
I mean it’s conceivable they’d come up with something similar, and it would be weird to expect a props department to find different screw heads just to be lore accurate.
A good balled hex driver is such a joy to use. Somewhat align it with the screw, and you can use it at weird angle.
I prefer to only use them when I can’t get alignment. They’re far more likely to round out the head in my experience, but they have their uses.
Maybe I didn’t use them enough yet, but I bought some Wiha balled hex driver and I haven’t stripped a screw yet, and I use cheap screws.
I also had to dismantle my 3d printer hot end with a lot of weirdly placed screws and it wasn’t even an issue.
Fair enough, I’m talking about big H5 construction screws and impact drivers, so a different use case maybe. Also it turns out when ARRMA uses too much threadlock on their axle set screws you can strip them really easily, and I needed more expensive special hex drivers with tight tolerances to work with them.
If you have ever used torx once in your life you can’t say that Philip is great anymore.
Torx is cool and all but all the touted virtues such as less cam-out go out the window if you have to drive them in at wonky angles, like tight fitting spaces. If you gotta angle the driver it’s not gonna seat well at all, apt to jump and wear out your bit. And if your only T20 rolls away and falls under a deck, yuck, 10mm problems.
Phillips has a place and that place is ‘a wonky place to hold a power drill’. That said I’m a huge fan of square head because it’s a happy medium between those two
I have used torx in weird angle with less issue than Phillips . My heart is fully sold to torx and Allen keys ❤️
Angled screws only work halfway well with Pozidriv
or Torx, standard Phillips 
slip too.Btw, why is Torq-set
or Tri-wing 
so uncommon? They seem the best mechanically.Edit: no way to change image size in markdown?
Efitedit: why does this exist?
Oval
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… 👋
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
Thanks. Most of my memes are stolen but as long as I manage to bring a smile to a few faces each day, it’s worth it.
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.
Hex already fit that niche.
Torx was just so they could make wood screws that weren’t Robertson and it bled out from there.
Torx bits are waaaay stronger than hex. Like double the surface area and tapered to work when corroded.
My 30 year old VW axles with hex bolts were a nightmare. The new ones are all Torx or 12pt.
I ended to driving an oversized Torx but into the nearly stripped hex bolts to finally remove them.
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 Roberson, 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.)
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
Oh okay. So just like with everything else we’ve failed to do
Ze Germans would like a word with you.
I’ve stripped more internal hex than all other types combined
The internal hex on sway bar end links are useless after any time in the salt. Last time I had to remove them I went straight to the angle grinder and ordered a new pair. Didn’t even attempt it.
We have to go deeper.
Preventing cam-out with a Phillips screw is like learning the ways of the Force. It takes patience and skill, something the Empire’s rigid Torx would never understand.
A 500+ million dollar budget and you can’t even take a proper picture.
What’s wrong with the picture?
I thought we got over Bricks and Screws years ago
Can we all agree that flathead should be outlawed and Phillips needs to get phased out with a quickness
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.
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.
Officially, “flathead” refers to countersunk screws. Slotted screws are terrible for my purposes, but they actually do have 1 advantage. If they get mud or something caked up in the slot it’s relatively easy to use a knife or some other pointy thing to clean it out. Guns and other things used in dirty environments often use slotted fasteners for that reason.
Yeah it also really difficult to strip a Flathead slot.
Wait what should the standard be?
Torx.
Googles it.
Omg, it has 6 sides, that means it’s bestagon
You know! ❤️
I don’t think I had ever actually seen a torx screw head until this conversation lol
If you have an iPhone, you can see two tiny torx screws on the bottom by the lightning/USB-C port
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?
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.)
Robertson is tapered, so the bit guides itself in really easily. You just have to hit the hole somewhat and it’ll guide itself in. Torx is fickle to line up and orientate.
I think it’s slightly more expensive to machine?
Torx for anything that needs to be torqued or used with power tools, Robertson (square) for anything intended to be used with hand tools or more finer work (a screwdriver)
If it ain’t broke…
Turns out the laws of physics and geometry are the same everywhere.
Then why would they end up with philips instead of torx?
Even in fictional universes that have wizards in space with swords made of light?
Yes!
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.
Correct. The original patent makes no reference to any sort of cam out / torque limiting feature.
Well, limiting torque but killing itself and becoming extremely hard to remove is terrible design lol
Ironically enough other standards appeared because of the need of more torque.
Huh always thought that was a self sealing stem bolt
Wrong universe
See that whooshing over your head its the Clear Air Turbulence.
Obligatory Babylon 5 Swedish meatballs
It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N’N-T’N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan ‘tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds. What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.
That reads like it’s straight out of one of the Hitchhikers books
Could be JIS.
Um, actually, those are rigid kal’dron adjustment pins used to correct focus crystal orientation.
