Spoiler
Probably at the hardware store picking up more Phillips head screws.
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I have impact-driven thousands of screws into wood in my back yard in the past 18 months. Over 1,000 of them were 6" (15cm) big guys, along with tons of 2.5" (~6cm) and 3.5" (9cm).
Every last one was Torx / hexalobular / 6-point. When I bought hardware that came with free phillips head screws, I threw that shit away and used my own.
The “feature” that philips head brings to the table makes it worse for just about every use case other than “I own exactly one screwdriver and never want to get another one.”
Torx doesn’t HAVE to be the alternative. There are many good screw designs out there. It’s just that where I live, that’s the non-philips choice that dominates the market. Every store has a variety of choices for torx-driven construction screws.
I think a lot of people who strip screws do so because no one told them that Phillips and Posidriv are different and incompatible
They literally don’t teach it at school and I’m pretty sure my grandpa couldn’t tell the difference either so quite literally nobody taught me until I got a screwdriver kit that had both PH and PZ.
Even worse is JIS, where it seems that its explicit and singular goal was to make a screw that would be instantly obliterated the moment a Phillips driver touched it. Fun fact, JIS drivers work far better on Phillips than Phillips drivers do, and I’ve yet to strip one since using JIS drivers almost exclusively
Is that what the PZ means, Posidriv?
And this is why I buy torx acres for anything I’m building myself. Unfortunately most premade things I buy have this crappy screw type.
i love how the head in the before picture is ALREADY stripped
And half the time it came from the factory like that.
If it comes from the factory with such pronounced corners, chances are its a Phillips/Square drive combo. In which case you can use a square drive bit which will drive it without slipping (IIRC square drive has similarly high torque before cam-out as torx). There are a ton of different kinds of screw drives though, the phillips-adjacent ones are under cruciform here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives
Stripped for Your pleasure!
Don’t feel bad, it’s the PH design who’s at fault. For some reason, someone decided PH should have tapered flanks, so that the bit has a constant tendency to slip out of the screw unless you push the bit into it with absurd amounts of force.
- They’re not a great design
- Screws are made as cheaply as possible
- People assume their drivers last forever. Just a tiny bit of tip damage and they’re grind up any screws.
- Philips in impact drivers is a sin.
People assume their drivers last forever. Just a tiny bit of tip damage and they’re grind up any screws.
I had honestly never even considered this possibility…
The one on the right is actually “Pozidriv” (PZ), which is a little better than regular Phillips at least.
Using well made screwdriver bits, replacing them when worn. Never had a ph head stripped since I started doing that. I’ve more Robertsons stripped in that time. In fact I’ve grown to dislike Robertson.
I do. proof: that is my backyard
Looks like a dystopia to me, can’t get anywhere by foot and all the cars look like the same general design
there’s literally someone walking in the pic
Walking to a car
How is that any different from today?
in the US, no different
Nah I’m buying hex screws/bolts or flathead ones. It is a feature, the feature is: the screw sucks.
I’m buying… Flathead…
Now see flathead is number two on my list of fasteners designed by dark forces.
It’s even worse than Philips for power tools.
Hex isn’t much better in my experience. Torx is great though.
Small hex fucking sucks, but cheap tools don’t help either
Neither does loctite
I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure phillips head originated for use in screwable rivets and large screws on automobiles where it was implied that the screw action was a one time deal using your hydraulic/pneumatic screw gun on the assembly line.
If you were to unscrew it, you probably should be using a fresh screwed rivet to replace it.
Of course those days are long gone because of superior non screwed riveting and pretty much everything removable in automotive being replaced by hex for the same reason of phillips being easily strippable.
The standard just stuck around because it was cheap.
Yes, the design is meant to effectively have a torque limit where the driver will cam out before the screw strips.
Phillips in electronics is what needs to die. They’re always stupidly small and strip so easily
just bought a bike from an american dude up here in Canada and I don’t think he owned a metric hex key set, judging by how every other bolt is stripped to fuck
I’d ask how, but I bought my nephew his first set of tools for his 25th birthday. He doesn’t exactly know how to use them (I’d gladly teach if I lived closer) but none of his blood relatives are mechanically inclined.
Still, better to have a plunger and not need one than to need a plunger and not have one.
Just bought a bike from a Vietnamese dude here in Vietnam and Holy shit who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put steel Philipshead screws into soft aluminum.
Unrelated, but making both metric and imperial hex was a mistake.
Edit: Turns out everyone in vietnam intentionally replaces JIS with philipshead because its easier to find.
Star drive and Torx are so much better I can’t believe they haven’t taken over the whole world
And square drive!
Amen brother!
Get a drill!! You can do this twice as fast with half the effort
Better make it an impact driver, just to be sure.
Best suggestion I have is to buy yourself a decent screwdriver or driver bits, then when it starts getting worn and slipping easily throw the bit/driver away and use a new one. You can get away with using a worn Phillips driver for a long time past it’s prime but you’re just making life hard for yourself by doing this.
Also make sure you’re using the correct size and type of bit, I’ve seen plenty of people struggling with Phillips heads because they’re doing something like using a ph1 bit on a ph2 screw or using a pozidrive bit on a Phillips head.
using a pozidrive bit on a Phillips head
So many people don’t even know Pozidriv exists, even in technical jobs. It keeps surprising me.
Some of those electric screwdrivers have torque settings. I don’t know how accurate they are (if I was doing an engine, first I’d be using a drill not a screwdriver second I’d actually take the time to calibrate it if I was working on something important) but I haven’t stripped out a screw with that driver yet.
Fucking love electric screwdrivers. They make shit a lot easier most of the time.
Phillips is bad enough to start with, but then they started making Pozidriv, which looks almost identical but isn’t actually compatible - making it even more likely to tear out.
I wonder why Canada seems to be the only country in the world that understands Robertson screw head supremacy?
Robertson wanted to be paid for his good design. Henry Ford didn’t want to pay, even if it was a tiny amount.
Ford was willing to use an inferior screw design that could cause production issues rather than pay a license to use the superior design. And, even though the patent expired a long time ago, these decisions have momentum.
I would bet that Torx is more popular than Robertson even though it’s a much newer design. Is it a better design? To me, Robertson seems to have the edge when it comes to simplicity, but Torx could be better for industrial applications because multiple lobes that have a surface perpendicular to the direction of torque probably gives it more control. Also, thanks to Ikea, I’d bet that hex-head bolts are incredibly common. They share most of the benefits of Robertson. I suspect they’re a little less efficient though because the closer you are to a circle shape, the less the faces of the screwdriver tip align with the direction of torque. I wonder if there are advantages of hex over square, since you see hex so much more often.
There’s a lot of history around the Robertson and Philips screw heads back when assembly lines were becoming a thing.
tldr: licensing is why Robertson didn’t spread to the US.
Robertsons are the Pinnacle screwhead. Torx and hex are also acceptable
Not Hex, I’ve stripped those a few times.
Yeah, hex is only a few obtuse angles away from being a circle. And that means it strips into a circle surprisingly easily.
I’ve found a couple that just didn’t seem to be snug enough from the start. Like 6 hex screws on this bike trailer thing. 5 of them fit a 6mm hex wrench perfectly, but on one it just spins and the next size up was too big. Either it wasn’t to spec or it warped at some point or something. I think other fastner heads would be more forgiving in this regard.
I’ve seen these in Australia but they’re not popular. Until a moment ago I thought they were for some specific arcane application.
I’ve learned recently, by buying pozi head screwdrivers, that they’re not so bad. But it is unnecessary. Torx or Robertson please.