How pleasing the screw face looks when used in decorative construction. The range of screw head sizes the system can support. How expensive it is to construct the screw and its drivers. How hard it is to construct the screw and its drivers.
#SATISFACTORY SCREWS DRIVER#
How well the driver engages the screw head without jiggling around. The tendency of a driver to push itself out of a screw head. Poor systems will strip or cam-out if too much torque is applied. A big reason why we are all stuck with it is that Ford a hundred years ago went with it due to being denied licensing by Robertson! For more about Phillips, see this.
I can’t think of a single technical reason why Phillips should exist in this modern world. Eradicating Phillips drives in the US is about as hard as eradicating the Imperial measurement system, and for many of the same reasons. Phillips drives will likely continue to exist for decades due to momentum and because they are cheap and because they don’t suck so bad that they are unusable. Torx has been widely replacing Robertson in the United States since then. They have been around for about 50 years, though only commonly available for the last 15 years. Torx screw drives are also known as hexalobular or star. For a history of Robertson screw drives, see the ThomasNet page.
#SATISFACTORY SCREWS LICENSE#
Robertson refused to license the system to anybody else and thus drove away interested parties from the US and other countries. While ubiquitous in Canada, they were rare in the US for decades because the inventor P. Robertson drives were invented in Canada and are a source of Canadian pride. They have been around for over 100 years. They are a simple and elegant design which looks good and is relatively easy to manufacture. Robertson screw drives are also known as square drives. We’ll use the names Robertson and Torx here while recognizing that these are original trade names which aren’t used by screw makers due to trademark ownership. I liked Robertson screws too until I started using Torx and found they worked better.
If you are a fan of Robertson screws, consider recognizing that Torx are better, even if you’ve liked Robertson. This posting is to explain why and is partly motivated by lots of existing Robertson devotees expressing doubt that something could be better. I’m going to get straight to the point and say that it’s time for Robertson screws to be retired and supplanted by Torx.
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