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Comment by magduf | Hacker News Reader

>I can say I truly don't understand how phillips ever even took hold over flatheads. Cheap phillips head screws seem designed to strip out.

It's not cheap ones; Phillips heads were designed to strip out. It's the very reason they're used.

The whole idea was to use them in factory assembly, so that workers wouldn't overtorque them. You put them in and tighten, and when they cam out, you're done.

If you want a fastener that can be easily removed, and maybe reused several times, Phillips is the wrong choice.

And if you have a torque-limiting screwdriver, as should be common in any modern factory, then Phillips is simply obsolete and unnecessary.

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If you design a feature and it doesn't work, you don't get credit for the design. Who wants a screw that will self-destruct when it is correctly torqued? Which, by the way, is a value that widely varies and you can't just design one screw head to limit torque for every situation.

I've had Phillips over-torque and eat threads. I've had them strip to a raw steel crater long before the head even meets the surface it's being screwed into.

Definitely agree that Phillips is obsolete. God I hate them. I may have a problem. I've worked on a lot of old engines in my life and seeing a torn-out cross is like a big middle finger from the previous person who worked on it, usually the manufacturer. An engine is something that deserves an easily removed fastener that is applied with a torque wrench. Who knows how many newton-meters a Phillips head takes before it cams? Does anybody? Probably a huge range.

>I've had Phillips over-torque and eat threads. I've had them strip to a raw steel crater long before the head even meets the surface it's being screwed into.

>Who knows how many newton-meters a Phillips head takes before it cams? Does anybody? Probably a huge range.

Yep, that's the problem with them. Maybe they made sense decades ago when assembling aluminum aircraft and they didn't have widely-available torque-limiting screwdrivers. But now they're ridiculously obsolete, and the only reason we still use them is because of sheer inertia (i.e., everyone has a Phillips-head screwdriver handy, but lots of people do not have a set of Torx drivers at hand; also, the inertia makes them cheap). They should have been retired ages ago. If I were dictator, I'd simply ban them (not allowed in new designs, no new Phillips screws allowed to be sold, but drivers of course are fine for removing old ones to replace with better fasteners). There is simply no good reason to use Phillips now.

Well, they’re designed to cam out. Not strip out.

It only takes a small number of cam-outs before it's stripping out.

Only if the fastener has mechanical properties on the order of butter.

Ah yes I prefer my screws to be made of a hard cheese myself, something along the lines of parmesan.

... a nut butter?

<I'll see myself out.>

This was my understanding as well, but the wikipedia article directly addresses it and say that it is a common myth with no supporting evidence.

> Extensive evidence is lacking for this specific narrative, and the feature is not mentioned in the original patents. However, a 1949 refinement to the original design described in US Patent #2,474,994 describes this feature.

That makes it sound like a software "feature" that gets added to the docs because it turns out to be useful in an unexpected way.

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