acceptable screws

Philips screws are awful. They strip if you look at them wrong. Flatheads should only be used on thumbscrews just in case you need a little extra torque from a screwdriver.

Torx and Hex are excellent.

Fuck this. Torx, Hex, square drive are all positive engagement. Phillips is literally designed to cam out. Slotted is just the first head type to have existed because of how easy it is to make, but is far inferior to every other type.

You must have never used torx. It's excellent. Hex is also okay.

If you've tried to do any large amount of work with slotted, you'll know that it belongs in Mental Disorders. I'll take Six-Lobe/Torx over phillips or slotted any day of the week.

Wow, person making this chart actually has no clue. First two are absolute worst nightmare. Torx, Pozidrive, JIS, Alan all great with minimum damage.

You can tell a shitpost is a shitpost when it is entirely wrong

Slotted is absolute shit. Philips is acceptable if you must live in the 1900s.

Torx all the way. Every other type should be illegal and punishable by death of perpetrator's extended family.

I'm sorry, calling Robertson "square" is insulting to a superior screw design and fuck you for even pretending it isn't.

Everyone who does not want torx and nothing but torx has never screwed torx screws.

There is one screw on this chart that I have a mortal hatred for. Just one. That being the fat Phillips (called "Phillips/square" on this chart meme thing).

I have no idea why, but some companies can't resist the sadistic urge to put tiny versions of these fuckers on equipment that should just use a torque or Phillips screw head. But no, they want you to truly suffer. Because they don't stop there: they make the fragile little fuckers out of NICKEL. Which means they are extra malleable and prone to strip if you so much as look at them the wrong way. So imagine you need to replace a hard drive on a RAID-type storage pool that's already down two spares and you can't fucking get the drive out of it's sled because the vendor not only hired a bodybuilder to tighten the screws, but simultaneously chose the worst possible metal just for giggles and chose the screw head that they no body will have the proper bit for and will inevitably use a normal phillips on until it strips.

I now have a ritual procedure of putting every drive that gets replaced in the coldest cold aisle in the datacenter for at least 5 minutes just to make these fucking screws less likely to ruin my day.

Fuck whoever invented the fat phillips, even the lowest ring of hell is too good for them.

A lot of those wacky screws exist solely to keep people from randomly messing with them. You have to really go out of your way the get the right tool for the job, and that's if there even is one.

Like the one-way screws holding together bathroom stalls.

I'm American and even i can agree Robertson are the goat.

Phillips and flat suck. Not enough surface area on Phillips, resulting in stripped screws. And getting centered on flat sucks.

Robertson drive, just pop your driver in and it's self centering, lots of surface contact to drive, and lots of meat on the head to prevent stripping. Anything more than 4 edges is unnecessary.

Socket (hexagon) and Robinson (square) are hyper common standards. You use Robinson for wood working due to the shape offering more resistance for high speed driving, and you use a socket with an allen key in order to get precise high torque hand tightening. IMO Phillips and Slot are the worst common standards due to stripping and sliding.

Where my hex fans at?

Let me introduce a fresh hell: we call them Apex screws.

nah torx and hex are great

Torx is the only screw I buy when I buy screws. All the phillipses and other shit screws I have were included with some other shit I bought.

Slot screws are the worst of them all...

No thanks. I will stick to my torx and hex, and they better be in metric.

• Don't use over or undersized screwdrivers, especially on smaller electronics.
• Stop torquing while you are still ahead.
• Be especially careful if the metals are soft.
• Keep your driver perpendicular. Better drivers can make this easier.
• Better to back out the screw and try again if it isn't going in smooth on something threaded. Check for debris and burrs. If you need to apply more pressure, do so carefully.
• I have found that for small stuff, getting nicer drivers makes a huge difference.

Penta-lobes for some of the small electronics are funny I guess, but they don't bother me as long as I have a bit for it. Main thing is to understand why some of these different shapes exist.

Flatheads are awful and you know it.

You obviously haven't ever worked in construction.

T-20 T-25 T-30

Square heads (Robinson) are used by millwork guys (cabinets)

Hex head are also used a lot

Edit: Also the fucking electrical screws that home depot only sells ONE FUCKING SCREW DRIVER FOR and its in a 3 pack of Milwaukee electricians insulated screwdrivers, it's ECX 1 and 2

where are they called slotted, I have only ever heard them called flat.

Whoever drew this deserves eternal damnation!

I actually really like Philips with slot because it's just a Philips with a slot for when the Philips gets stripped so the two on the bottom right corner are the best in my opinion because if one ether the flat head or the Philips gets stripped you can just grab a ratchet or spanner

Phillips are for boring fuckin normies who can't chooch

You'll call a Phillips a Phillips but not a Robertson a Robertson or an Allen an Allen, smh

My boy, you do NOT do Robinson dirty like that.

Fuuuuckin hell, I haven't seen a slotted screw since the 1980s. Philips screws are exclusively for electrical.

Is this yet another way the US has dropped 30 years behind modern countries?

Yeah hex or torx it is. Everything else can burn in hell

I'm seeing a lot of people here claiming that the Philips head was originally designed to cam out/strip to prevent a transfer of force sufficient to twist the head off. While I agree this does sound logically plausible, I could find no reference to such features in the original patent: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/0f/28/e3/3e3075abbb9779/US2046837.pdf 🤷‍♂️

I submit that every screw in the world should be the six lobe slotted. For the stuff that’s not tamper-resistant, anyway.

You have the six lobe for actually building things, because fuck Phillips head screws, and the slot for convenience where you could use anything from a coin to a knife.

Here in the US, certain brands of deck screws for outdoor use are six lobe and they come with the driver bit in the box because everybody has the damn Phillips and flat head screwdrivers! But to be fair, if you have a bunch of tools you probably also have a set of torx drivers.

if you need to unscrew a torx screw and you don't have any torx bits, you can try using a flathead. it won't work and you'll probably get hurt doing it, but you can try it.

Pozidriv is clearly superior to Phillips

What the actual fuck is a 'S type' screw? What purpose does that have that another normal screw type cannot provide? What madness is this?!

Torx master race has entered the chat.

Op has never done any serious screw work it seems

I'm a slotted screw HATER

Everything electrical uses them and it's a nightmare keeping the screwdriver aligned properly to try and take them out at a good speed

My favorite would be square drive but they always seem to make those out of recycled ham sandwiches or something

All IKEA furniture uses Pozidriv (no “e”, it’s a trademark). Not going to say if that’s good or bad, but operating a Pozidriv with a Phillips is always going to be terrible.

No mention of JIS which is yet another "fuck Phillips" argument

Factually incorrect.

Torx and Square/Robertson are superior, Hex/Allen and Phillips are allowed a seat on this council but not granted the rank of master, Posidriv is theoretically Phillips++ but only to the six people in the world that know what it is and own a Posidriv screwdriver, to everyone else it's that goddamn Phillips that keeps camming out. JIS is parallel universe Phillips, it's exactly as reasonably okay as Phillips is for identical reasons, the biggest problem is that they exist alongside and closely resemble Phillips screws. Everything else except slotted is a mental disorder, and slotted was dropped on its head as a child.

Personally I wish we could eliminate flathead screw.

We're screwed

The worst one I ever came across was five lobe tamperproof on a Seagate external hdd. Couldn't find any bits for it that didn't have to be imported. Ended with a rather destructive disassembly

Torx and PZ ftw.

Also, I'd like to apologise to the future owner of my house for making several constructions using both in no particular order.

Phillips and pozi are actually designed to cam out (look it up on wikipedia). Started using torx a few years ago and I will never go back to pz again, even if it's on the clock and someone else is paying for materials.

Flat head still has it's place IMO, for example on machinery that gets used out in the field where you might need to improvise a driver out of a knife or coin or something.

Ph and pz are the work of the devil though.

There's a distinct lack of love for pozidrive here. It's like Phillips but without being shit.

Holy hell the entirety of Lemmy just exposed themselves as retarded jobless people.

Six lobe, or torx, is fucking awesome when screwing in serious screws. It's the reason why it replaced all philips and most hex heads.

Slotted screws are the fucking worst. You guys have never worked a blue collar job in your lives 🤣😂😭

They y-type screw is obnoxious.

I've only encountered those on Nintendo products, they are the worst.

I came here to show love for Robertson, but it looks like I didn't need to. You guys are the best. 😁

Apparently I don't know shit about handywork since everyone here is swooning about Torx and I don't even have an idea what they are

Cue all the Canadians pretending anyone gives a shit about their goofy chamfered square deck screws.

Clutch screw aka the green lantern corp screw

Ahh, Lemmy shit post, makes sense now

I will also allow hex. Anything else can get fucked

Fuck Phillips screws

ASSY (from WÜRTH) is my go to for wood screws, and Torx for mechanical, the rest can go to hell.

Oh.. I thought this was satirical about gender or something. Not literally saying that those are the two best screws, because NOBODY IN THE WORLD THINKS THAT.

Probably the best shitpost I've seen in a while.

Translated into Albertan:

Slotted = Flathead. Square = Robertson. 6 lobe = Torx

One day some event is going to happen that ends civilization. The last sentence spoken before the event will be "oh shot does anyone have a hex set?".

How is the one that conveniently includes both types of slot not the standard for all screws? I'm sure there's an actual reason for it, but I'd prefer to remain incensed.

i like the torx screws (philips strips easier)

Dafuq is a pozidrive

Joke aside, curious about what the percentage distribution is on those. I won't be surprised if the first two together have like 90% or more.

Square!?!? Robertson should be the gold standard here!!!

Robertson (square) should be the only screw type, but the US got all butt hurt that a Canadian perfected the screw.

Pretty sure I could get all of these screwed in with a combo of Philips and flathead

what's wrong with philips + slot

Nah. Fuck the slotted screw. I hate that piece of shit screw. Phillips is acceptable. Torx is my preferred.

Pentalobe is my favorite.

I don't see how square/triangle worldbt be ideal. They don't look like they'd strip nearly as bad

Half dozen or so of them are just slot or phillips with extra shit, no weird tools needed.

Where's the Arthur's head?

I'm a 6 Lobe Tamper myself.... Eeeww, I just heard it out loud.

Tri-wing is the best ! Never saw it before.

Slotted can go straight to hell before all others.

six lobe and it's variants are instruments of the devil, I swear I can't ever get the screw size right for the life of me and get so paranoid about stripping screws.

Where torx superiority

It's not "Phillips/slot" 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Hex is fucking stupid.