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Comment by adolph | Hacker News Reader

ACR Torq-Set Drive System . . . is an offset cruciform drive system that allows more torque to be applied.

Nah, they need Rockwell Automation's retro encabulator. The inverse reactive current it produces (designed for use in unilateral phase detractors) should also be capable of automatically synchronising cardinal gram meters. My guess would be that the gram meters have become unsynchronised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w&ab_channel=rlcar...

From their website: "Are you interested in Licensing this technology...?"

It's bugs me they can get a patent on a shape with features that you or I could design in a couple nights. I thought the whole reason the world didn't already adopt better screw heads than blasted Phillips (like Robertson, or square bits for those who aren't familiar) is that licensing arrangements weren't economical.

I personally think that torx should be used more often(the star shape).

Agreed. Torx might not be ideal, but it is widespread and (relatively) cheap. And miles better than anything else that is widespread and cheap.

The local hardware stores' own brands offer a wide range of cheap, torx-compatible screws. I think this started not too long ago (but can't say for sure, probably 2019 when the latest torx patent expired?), and they still offer screws with the normal cross shape. Both are of the same, decent quality.

I only buy the torx/star variants, since they're just superior.

Regular people cannot handle using torx.

Philips is nice because (untrained) people naturally will over-tighten the fuck out of every screw they encounter. Philips cams out and prevents them from going too far overboard. In fact its literal design goal was to make a screw that is hard to over-tighten.

I know if we used torx on some of our products, we'd spent 10000% more time on removing snapped screw bodies.

It's me, I'm untrained people.

Is there a decent convention for how much a screw should be tightened, or is it fully case-by-case?

There are torque specs and torque wrenches to solve this problem in manufacturing.

For day to day, 95% of the time you can tighten a screw gently until it stops, its head fully against the surface, then just "snug it up" a bit to seat it.

"Snug it up" is of course vague, so refer back to line 1.

Square Robertson screws are my go to. My father had a wood shop and used them for production as they were nearly impossible to strip and the screw holds tight into the slightly tapered driver. So I grew up using them for various projects as we had boxes of them. You can easily one hand a 3-4 inch #10 deck screw. Those crappy Torx things they sell don't compare.

If we are playing pin the plan on the happenstance I guess the profit from the patent could pay for the sales work necessary to turn a random shape into a standard anyone uses.

You or I could not "design it in a couple nights". For a one-off part with no particular requirements, sure, although it's a lot of work just to manufacture and test once for a critical application. And there is no point to design such a thing except for a critical application with some unique requirements. But to make a new standard, mass-produced fastener to replace an existing one and make sure it's manufacturable, make sure its actually better than something like Torx and is worth making for your niche customers, make sure you've got the dimensions correct for all different sizes, then make prototypes and test them it could easily be person-years of work.

That being said, pozi-driv and JIS "+" style screws are far superior to philips and readily available. Even in Europe half the time you see a "+" it's philips and it's kind of impossible now have everyone know the difference and to deprecate philips even though they do usually have markings.[1]

[1]https://rtstools.com/jis-vs-phillips-screwdrivers-and-where-...

Oh my, Im looking forward to getting some of those. Never thought I would be so excited about not stripping out screws. I bet their next approved tool kit is going to come with a drill bit

interesting ... and tiring of this site ... this post just lost a point. Why? no response, no reasoning against wanting screws that perform well. Just a loss of points. FU y combinator ... i think ill spend more time posting elsewhere

See also MorTorq, also by Phillips, which can work in fasteners with low-profile heads.

Boy, those look expensive to make. Not gonna use those to build a deck.

Agreed. I'd love to see the manufacturing process for those heads. I can't imagine such fine detail being forged. Maybe it's some type of multi-step blind broaching process. Like you said, expensive.

Most screw heads are formed in a cold header. If you've never seen one running, you'd think it was magic.

Wire goes in one side, and using a surprisingly simple and old (WWII era) machine made with some heavy castings, plain bearings, oily camshafts, and the magic of tool steel, the wire is incrementally upset, extruded, formed, punched, and thread rolled. Screws roll out the other side at an astonishing rate - hundreds per minute.

I can't share video of my customer's machine running, but here's one from Youtube:

https://youtu.be/WoN2KKfbzLA?si=iN42q6n1wBkoJ-gS&t=187

I imagine that many screws on spacecraft use CNC-cut machine screw threads, and have significant QC measures in place, but I'd be unsurprised if they had cold-formed Torx or hex heads.

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