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
Somehow, Phillips head survived.
May the Philips be with you.
Oh man, this is 100% real. Disney is such garbage…
Meh, it’s one of those things that’s going to be around forever. I would be absolutely unsurprised if crosshead screws were still a thing in 4800 ce.
You’re building a light saber.
Do you:
A. Weld everything
Or
B. Drill holes and thread the holes for a bolt
I’m sure they have some kind of crazy riveting technology. Is she installing screws because she wants to be able to easily take apart her lightsaber if needed?
I mean, supposedly some lightsabers were built in a cave. They probably used whatever was on hand, and I’m thinking screws are more common in rubbish strewn pits and rankor caves than welding machines.
Well, the option with screws makes it more repairable.
A 500+ million dollar budget and you can’t even take a proper picture.
What’s wrong with the picture?
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.
Where do you think we got it from?
I thought it was going to say “IG-88 was a dildo.”
He certainly looks like one
Can we all agree that flathead should be outlawed and Phillips needs to get phased out with a quickness
Wait what should the standard be?
Torx.
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
Googles it.
Omg, it has 6 sides, that means it’s bestagon
You know! ❤️
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.
Honest question, why not torx across the board? What do square do well that’s not covered by torx?
I think it’s slightly more expensive to machine?
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 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.
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)
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.
No offense, but you haven’t unscrewed/screwed enough slot screws if you don’t see why they’re worse in every way. The criteria for a good screw isn’t that you don’t have to have the correct tool. The bits are $0.99!
I unscrew a single screw and whether it’s a light switch or an electronic device, I’m already annoyed. Even if you use a flathead screwdriver that fits perfectly, it will un-center and slip out, whether you use a hand bit/screw driver or a drill.
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.
Bet it’s an inch screw too
No wonder the Jedi failed.
Thought it was gonna be the Phillip’s head strip
I thought we got over Bricks and Screws years ago
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.
Oh okay. So just like with everything else we’ve failed to do
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.
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
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
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.
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.
You’d think that they would have switched to Pozidriv.
Why? Torx is better in every way. If you are going to change, why half ass it to Phillips 2.0
You’re right - Torx is definitely a better option. I just mentioned Pozidriv because people seem to love Phillips head so much for whatever reason, so Pozidriv seems like a logical increment from there.
(@Dan not shitting on you, i just really hate Phillips)
Next logical increment… Gotta say ain’t nothing logical about Phillips/posidrive bullshit,
Robertson drive was around when Henry Ford decided to use Phillips on his cars. Robertson was more expensive to licence the patents(Phillips was cheap cause people thought it was shit)
God damned Nazis fucking everything up(Ford was a Nazi(ish) and a real piece of shit). Maximizing profits over everything else screws everything up as we are seeing right now, but sometimes it doesn’t just fuck up the here and now, but like Phillips, it just keeps fucking everything up for more than 100 years.
“Let’s make a drive that has an angle to it so that it will strip out super easily and destroy the fastener(don’t tell me Phillips is great because it limits torque, it doesn’t without destroying the head so bad you might not be able to remove it)” said no good engineer ever.
Backwards compatibility
Pozidriv is intentionally not backwards compatible, and one of the biggest problems it has is looking enough like Phillips that people assume it must be compatible, use a mismatched screw and driver, and strip a head.
Which is why it sucks. I go to work and I see a cross cut, I’m going to use my Phillips head of appropriate size to pull it out or put it in. Does pozidrive have any indication it’s not Phillips? I’ve honestly never seen one. I might be working on brand new stuff or 60 year old stuff.
I don’t have any pozidrive bits but I have two sets of long torx, some double sided torx for my hand driver, and a bunch of little torx bits in my bag to hand out to the kid that came to his first day of work with nothing but a #2 Phillips.
Yes, the head is visually distinctive from Phillips, with four smaller cuts in between the main ones.
Good to know if I ever see one.
I think it’s pretty likely that you’ve seen loads and never known they were different. The difference is small enough that you wouldn’t realise it was significant until you were told:
TIL