Phew… and what a dive that was. What a waste of a channel. I don’t mind the AvE stuff nearly as much as the insufferable persecution complex of WS though.

I kinda fell out when he started getting Grumpy, but god damn the man could turn a phrase. I miss the shitty tool teardowns

Yeah, that was a sad spiral to watch.

He hasn’t put out a new video in over a month

That’s what a worker at my local Ace store said: they were slowly transitioning to Torx.

That’s one of my issues with Pozi - it can be hard to see the markings, and not everyone has great eyesight. I mostly object to Phillips-related screws because there are so many variations that mostly look the same and require a table to differentiate. And none have the torque-transfer performance of Torx. Plus, you can use a hex head in a Torx bit in an emergency and you don’t much care about either the bit or the head.

Yes, and you’re Canadian. Robertson is the standard there, and while it’s used in other countries, not nearly as much.

In the beginning was slotted heads, mainly because mass machining and casting wasn’t good enough to have more precise forms. Then came the Great Connector Wars, and in the US the Phillips head won and was standardized; almost every house built in the US in the past 80 years will be built with these (and nails). Slotted heads are much less common, but you find them in various specific places, like where the heads are visible and you want to hide the screw as much as economically possible.

Canada, however, was smarter and standardized on the Robertson head; IIRC one reason for the divergence was the Phillips licensing cost. In any case, Robertson is superior to Phillips in most ways, except it’s even worse to dig out if it gets painted over.

As machining improved, many attempts were made to improve on Phillips, which mostly amounted to polishing a turd; Robertson remained unchanged as it was already pretty good.

Then came hex, which is great except it’s structurally pretty terrible for the head. Still, it can be seen as an improvement in Robertson, but not quite so good as to be worth all the retooling. Good enough that it’s probably the second, or at least third, most popular head in the US.

Finally, someone did some fucking math and came up with Torx, which is provably and demonstrably superior to all other screw heads. It maximizes force transfer, and leaves more material in the head; it’s harder to strip out, and can be applied effectively to very small screw heads. There’s a security version, which was mostly useless (for intended purpose) the day after it was released, but beyond that, there’s no real improvement that can be made.

The Phillips patents expired decades ago, so it’s holding on mainly from inertia. Commercial contractors don’t have much invested in it, because they have to literally buy boxes of replacement Phillips heads because of how shitty the design is and how often the heads break. While manufacturers have a steady stream of revenue from selling replacement Phillips tools that have broken, this is balanced by the mouth-watering prospect of every contractor in the US buying new Torx size-sets and high-end Torx tools. And the screw makers probably DGAF as they’ll sell screws either way; Torx screws might be a little more expensive - they used to be, but I haven’t compared lately.

Canada may just motor on using Robertson; there’s less incentive for them to retool since Robertson isn’t nearly as crappy as Phillips, so the cost/benefit to upgrade to Torx is less compelling. But who knows?

The problem is, when working with electronics, you can have a great screwdriver but it won’t help if the screws in the device are very cheap (and probably partially stripped already from someone opening it previously).

I use the correct driver, I’ll go through my kit to find the best fitting bit. It simply comes down to the fact they are designed to strip to avoid “catastrophic failure”. Plus the fact that companies use intentionally cheap, soft screws, to make repair and service harder. Cough cough zinc screws on a $10,000 iMac (steel screws would have cost 25 cents for 10, zinc like 5 cents for 10, fucking ridiculous).

Tbh 99% of the hate for hex is probably because Allen keys exist, and are included with everything. Those things are just pure hell. Hex is fine if you have proper drivers for it, but a lot of people don’t.

Note: Speaking as someone that lives in America, I’m sure the rest of the world has already solved this.