The first two are screw heads. The rest are mental illnesses.
Screw drive arguments are my absolute favorite, thank you OP for posting such divisive content!
Star bit.
Same - this will easily be my favorite post of the day, and it’s still early.
Wonder what the usecase for “H-type” would be
Anti-tamper.
I’ve seen them used to screw together toilet stalls in public bathrooms. Stops bored crackheads disassembling them.
For vocalists, if the only tool they have is a tuning fork.
A square screw is a Robinson, fyi.
There’s some anti-Canadian bias in this chart for sure.
Don’t call Philips after the inventor but Robertson after the shape.
I’m looking for a Six-Lobe Tamper Cheese screw.
What is labelled “flat” here I’ve only ever heard of as “countersunk” and what’s labelled as “slotted” I’ve only ever heard of as “flat head”. Also wtf is “PF”?
I had the same thought! Also I’ve only ever heard “torx” instead of “six lobe” although I’m guessing torx is a brand name.
“square” aka Robertson
I thought, for some reason, that Robertson was ostracized from the screw world.
Best drive going hands down. I don’t need a deliberate tourqe out to save my driver, I’m a big boy. Plus it usually just breaks the screw
In the USA maybe.
Everywhere else it’s pretty common.
Fun fact, Henry Ford wanted to use them on his cars, but tried to screw Robertson in the deal. His petulance is the reason that Americans can’t benefit from this perfect design.
I knew there was some reason for it, but I couldn’t get my brain to remember what it was; but this sounds familiar.
damn your area uses dumb names for things then lol
calling a drive type by the head shape, that’s wild
Thanks – little known fact, I time traveled to a hundred years ago to invent these terms.
neat
Anything in the bottom two rows (other than hex) and you are welcome to curse the ancestry of the person who decided to use that type of fastener.
Anyone know what the heck the Pozidriv/Round Hole combo is for?
Anti-removal/tamper resistant. The angle of the slots make it really easy to tighten, a fucking bitch to remove.
psychopaths
And if you lack the screwdriver. So long as the head is not the flat style and you have room. Angle grinder/dremel and everything turns into a slot head screw.
Slot screw head you mean. Flat head refers to a head with a shape designed to go into a countersunk hole.
…no it doesn’t. Flat head screwdriver. The head type is called a countersink or self-setting.
Translation error
Tag yourself I’m cheese square
What is this square?
It is called a Robertson not a square.
It’s called Robertson by proud Canadians, in the US, at least, “square” is common. A square drive also wasn’t invented by Robertson, he just made the tooling for manufacturing the screws to be economical.
Technically Robertson has a taper to it, while square drive doesn’t. Though nobody really differentiates it in common usage.
At least with star drive, while they are the same, pretty much everyone calls them Torx.
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If you’re looking at a guide like this, it’s pretty likely that it’s because you need to know what to put into a search engine to buy the right screwdriver, so it’s absolutely got value to know the name other people are using for a thing and selling it as.
The perimeter of the hole is square. The hole and driver are a trapezoidal prism.
Phillips/square? You mean pre-half-stripped and here I come with a too small screwdriver to finish the job.
Philips/Square/Slotted (all three combined) is really common in North American electrical. Switches, outlets, breakers; all commonly use them for terminal screws.
Great for lower torque applications; you certainly wouldn’t use them for like a deck/structural screw.
You can torque a Roberson until either the screw, driver, or motor break
Robertson on it’s own, yes. As long as you use the proper size driver before you round out the square.
When you start carving out space for additional drivers though, the screw head becomes much weaker. The combo Robertson/Slotted/Philips screw heads will not standup to the same forces.
Makes sense, I haven’t seen Robby+inferior. What the world needs is a Roberson deep, and a torx shallow, on the same head. Everybody can use one of the best 2 drives without fighting about which is better
i don’t always strip my screws to death but when i do, what the hell do you mean they got the job started for me?
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also relevant Bonus xkcd
Torx torx torx torx!
I use exclusively torx or tamper-proof torx for my projects and I love it so much.
I worked as a supervisor where my predecessor thought square/Robertson were superior without listening to the others who were used to torx. I very quickly changed back to using torx.
Would you have let an employee continue to use Roberson if that was their preference?
No. It was a scenic construction shop. Letting one person use a different standard would slow the process during break down or repairs. Having to remind the others to swap bits for one scenic piece or even on the same piece when it’s controlled chaos at best is not worth it.
Yea, I suppose. We just kept swap bits with both in our drivers for the one guy we let used torx or he’d have a fit. Or deliberately snap shafts
Whats the advantage of 1 over the other?
Square/Robertson claims to have less slippage and less prone to rounding out. That’s never held up in my experience. Torx has the same claims and outside of some user error, it’s held up for me.
Square/Robertson bits hold the fastener tightly so they don’t fall off when starting to drive them. Star/Torx doesn’t hold as well.
It also doesn’t let the bit torque out when your driving into something hard like walnut or oak. In my furniture making days we exclusively used Robertson because the ability to stick a screw on the driver, and to know absolutely that you won’t slip out and gouge the workpiece.
Hexagons are the bestagons!
Now I want to see a ‘how it’s made’.
Never heard of Phillips the screw before. We call it Kreuzschlitzschraube and the tool for it is a Kreuzschlitzschraubendreher, and I think that’s beautiful.
And who renamed the inbus? This is not a maths class!
But it’s absolutely fascinating that torx on the other hand is here with its generic name.
Although in my opinion there are three slots only: torx, hex and wrong.
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Not pictured here is also ‘JIS’ or Japanese Industry Standard screws.
They are very similar to Philips, but they’re slightly deeper with sharper corners. They have less tendency to ‘cam-out’ and strip the screw head.
Supposedly the camming out thing is actually intentional design in Philips screws, to prevent screw guns from over torquing screws in early automotive/aircraft assembly lines; but there’s not actually evidence to support that according to Wikipedia.
Not pictured here is also ‘JIS’ or Japanese Industry Standard screws.
Yeah I thought it was funny they got the JIS head shape but not the drive.
They are very similar to Philips, but they’re slightly deeper with sharper corners. They have less tendency to ‘cam-out’ and strip the screw head.
Until you try to drive one with a Philips because who the fuck outside of Japan has a JIS driver lying around, then they strip real easy. Ask me how I know.
Why, why, are there so many different cross-shaped screw drives?
who the fuck outside of Japan has a JIS driver lying around, then they strip real easy. Ask me how I know.
Funnily enough, I only know about these because I’ve got one of I Fix-It’s screwdriver sets with 70 driver bits.
I was wondering why there were two sets of what looked like Philips and went looking for info.
Funnily enough, I only know about these because I’ve got one of I Fix-It’s screwdriver sets with 70 driver bits.
I got one of these too, and holy shit is it worth it. Great purchase. I love not having to wonder if I’m going to have the right screwdriver head (generally. Obviously, this thread has taught me that there’s like infinite more types)
If I could just wave a magic wand and make it happen I would change all screw-type fasteners into Torx and just be done with these problems forever.
