A drill bit that can also drive screws
core77.com
core77.com
I bet they’ll sell a lot of these to homeowners with deck projects, or small softwood projects, and I bet they’ll work just fine for that.
The use case limits how hard they can make these. Absolutely the philips head will get munged being used as a drill bit, and then it’ll cam out of screws at the wrong time. If your driver bit is much harder than your screws then the screws will get stripped. A stripped screw in something important is worse than a broken driver.
This combo-bit is essentially an exceptionally dull 4 fluted drill bit. Any time possibly saved in not swapping bits is lost to the slower drilling speed due to the dullness. The fact that it only works with Phillips screw heads also slows things down due to the greater care needed to avoid stripping the screw head and the work required to remove a stripped screw head when it does occur.
It's not like people have not though about how to do this faster it is just that there are existing alternative solutions that are far superior. Amortizing swaps over multiple screws, using a second drill, having a quick change chuck, using self tapping screws and possibly others that I don't know about.
> Phillips screw heads also slows things down due to the greater care needed to avoid...
It has a Pozidriv version too as the article notes. Also it's worth noting that even though you don't slip a Phillips or Pozi screw, the driver gets nicked and worn drive by the constant application of torque repeatedly. Even my Weras show some wear even though I give the utmost care I can give.
I'd use that thing at home for light duty stuff, or use it for a very long heavier duty job and might get rid of it at the end of the day.
Self tapping screws do not drive so cleanly most of the time, so I'd not prefer them for the places I see every day. They're good for places I can't see at the end of the day.
I know he's drilling into hardwood, but look how hard he has to press to drill into it. Doesn't look particularly light duty to me.
> having a quick change chuck
This is the way. Under $10 at Home depot for one of these and you can swap 1/4" hex shank bits in less time than you can say "swap 1/4 inch hex shank bits".
To any industrial designers here, this is said with minimum animosity, the arts are important and I cherish them. But for the love of god, if you send me over another step file with a surfacing update that has moved the model coodinate system like 3 microns and changed almost nothing else I might come over and throw your macbook out the window. With love - a mechanical engineer
https://www.amazon.com/Milwaukee-48-32-4604-Phillips-Shockwa...
Good hardening is expensive.
And I usually use torx anyway
I could see some use cases for them with really large wood screws, but the Makita drill I used was beefy as shit and never had any trouble. Maybe it's better for big screws but I can't really see why you'd use them for small screws.
At first blush it does seem stupid to use an impact driver in a wood screw, but they just don't strip or cam out.
They're the same size as drills now.
And putting in metal roofing or walls without hammering the rubber washer on the roofing screw is amazing. You don't even have to think. Set it to torque setting 1 and forget about it.
Impact drivers around here are pretty much for loosening metal bolts, and as a sign that your car dealership hates you. But I guess they're faster.
But... I feel there are other tools/solutions in this space that work much better: self-drilling screws, nailguns, nailguns-but-for-screws, etc.
That said it takes me all of two seconds to switch from a torx bit to a drill bit, and I tend to do all my drilling then all my screwing to reduce the need for tool changes.
I've been using Robertson but I don't often build stuff.. yet..
Square bits on the other hand drive the edge of the bit against the wall of the square hole. The edge can cut a circle into the screw, and the square head gets turned into a circle by wear. Thus required tolerances are much lower, and screws don't fall off the bit. If they did fall off you'd know to change the worn bit.
This driver/drill bit is strictly worse than the alternatives. Most homeowners doing any building other than drilling a few holes for photo hanging will probably have bought a drill/driver pair from Ryobi or something anyways, so you don’t really need to swap bits.
A few seconds is often the difference between doing something and not. Obviously not talking about work.
But if I have a drill, already with a drill/screw bit in it, and box of right sized screws it is going to get used anywhere a screw can make any difference at all.
People say "If all you have is a hammer, ..." For a reason!
Nobody says, "If all you have is a drill, a box of drill bits, a set of drawers with screws, ...". For a reason!
(It would be great if every decent sized box of screws came with a drill/screw bit appropriately sized for pre-drill and screw. As a hobby level crafter, who cannot always find things, those would be the boxes of screws I bought every time. Every other box of screws would become invisible to me.)
This is very common. GRK, Spax, Axis (a local brand to the Seattle area), and many more. Yes, they are better!
I've got a rural, agricultural, mining and aviation background and since the 1970s we've worked singlely or in pairs with multiple drills, one to drill holes, another to drive screws.
If there's a big cupboard or similar on the bench it's not unknown to have seperate drills for
* thin pilot hole,
* main larger diameter hole,
* larger again counter sink hole for top of shaft to hide screw head,
* driver to put screws in.
So relatable it's funny.
Yeah, you described my experience exactly! :)
A useful comment on HN!
Great idea!
https://www.lowes.com/pl/power-tool-accessories/drill-bits/t...
Not sure if I agree here. Of course SDS has been the standard for quite a while in masonry uses, but impacts simply do not have the power of a full sized drill with a 1/2" chuck (or bigger) for more difficult materials. The 1/4" hex shank is pretty limiting for torque as well, and the chuck has far worse concentricity if you care at all about precision.
The hex shank bits are decent (although I'd say I prefer round shank with flats) but calling round shank obsolete seems a bit far.
Try getting a quick-change chuck and this opinion will change.
- under a foundation
- on a ladder
- <insert favorite example here>
I was out on a bike last week - it’s easily the nicest possession I have and perhaps the nicest I’ll ever have, a Cervélo Soloist.
The front rotor starting rubbing the calliper after a fast descent. I happened to have the correct tool and went to adjust the calliper and immediately stripped the screw head. I went to three bike shops, but all were too scared to touch it.
I did as the my all said. I cut a slot in the screw with a Dremel and tried a large flathead screwdriver, but it still wouldn’t budge. So I made the sides flat and got it out with a massive spanner. Bike frame miraculously untouched.
Satan himself arranged for these shit screws to be put in that amazing frame.
Glad your bike was okay in the end.
FWIW, woodworkers that care about speed for these operations (mostly niche furniture assembly) do them in parallel and simply have two drivers or use nail-guns with "glue nails".
For quick boarding applications just use modern nails and a modern nail gun. They've gotten really good and really cheap.
This doesn't even speed up screw applications. Just use modern self-tapping wood screws. They've gotten really good and really cheap.
If you're doing anything structural, GRK screws are absolutely insane, reusable, and practically indestructible--though not cheap.
Of course, the main use of this is to drill a lot of holes and drive fasteners at the same time... for which you would want Torx/Robinson/etc and a better drill bit. What everyone does now is just carry two tools, a drill and an impact, clip to your belt, and switch as needed. If you want to carry one tool that does both okay-ish, get an impact driver and a set of impact drill bits. You can quick-switch them pretty fast and you can even do it one-handed.
I've never used it, but there's also the "WORX Switchdriver."
https://cdn.axminstertools.com/media/catalog/product/cache/6...
The tip is scalloped and sharp for precise driving and piloting, the threading is also sharp, as is the profiled head which does a very good job of counter sinking into soft timber.
They are so sharp in fact that it’s very easy to accidentally drive them an inch deep. Comes wax lubricated in zinc plated or A4 marine stainless for external use.
This really just turns one problem into a bunch. I'll point out the significant ones haven't seen so far
1. It has no self-centering capability, because you've removed any split point
2. The hole diameter is massive compared to the screw head you can drive because of how it must be designed. Either you are limited in the minimum size of the fastener (IE it's bigger than you want), or the drive is smaller than you want.
Example: Let's say this thing will drill like a 1/4" inch hole and then you want to use a 5/16" fastener in that hole. You'd normally have a t-40 head on that fastener, but they literally can't. The width of just the inset torx portion (IE with no accounting for the bit taper and such) is > 1/4" (it's 6.6mm), so they have to undersize the drive. Probably all the way to t-20, maybe t-25 if they are lucky.
That's insane.
There is maybe a small range of diameters that hit the right sweet spot.
3. The effective point angle here is basically unusable for anything but soft to medium hardwoods. On top of that, because of the flutes they removed, and the fact that it is hard to keep sharp, it will cause more tearout.
This will be made worse by having an effective 4 flute head instead of a 2 flute one. If this was in a drill press or a machine, it would be better than the 2 flute one, but in a drill/driver it's just going to add a lot of chatter and increase tearout.
It's the same effect that happens if you try to use a 4 flute or 6 flute countersink in a drill driver vs a one or 2 flute one. The extra flutes make it worse because you can't hold it rigidly enough
4. Drilling and driving are very different applications - you aren't driving the screw in at 2000rpm, and you aren't trying to drill with super high torque.
Expect to either snap lots of screws, or break lots of drills, depending which wrong tool you use :)
5. As it dulls, it will not just lose the ability to drill, but will start very quickly slipping when you try to drive the screw.
6. It is impossible to sharpen without custom jigs or automation.
There are useful drill+something combos, but i do think we found them all already (IE drill+taps are useful, as are drill + c'bore and drill + c'sink)
I don't think this is one of them.
Edit: or even clicking that switch back and forward.
Every time I try it, I disable it again. I must be using it wrong, or that thing is way too powerful for me.
It even managed to break the screw a few times.
I might be atypical here but I rarely drive screws without a preplanned hole that's typically made in batches using a jig or machine, like a router or press. I rarely need to drive a screw directly into a random hole I just made.
If I'm constructing ad-hoc, I'm almost certainly using nails. Not only for convenience, but because they tend to be better suited to this kind of construction. An exception might be drywall screws, but even then, you've got a totally different system established for doing that.
I don't see the use case here. I'm also kind of stuck in my ways, though. I'm open to this making sense, but I'm definitely not an early adopter.
I think I might have thought I wanted this before I learned to plan my builds better.
Unlike with Philips, you are less likely to use the wrong bit by accident though. One of the worst things with Philips is that there is a very similar and very popular drive called Pozidriv, and you sometimes find both on the same piece of equipment, adding to the confusion. Using the wrong driver kind of works, but with a good chance of stripping the head or damaging the bit.
Torx and Robertson simply do not do that. They just work and that is really worth it!
It's an outright scam to use them in construction compared to Torx and Robertson which thankfully are slowly replacing them in use.
Pozidriv screws are marginally better in this regard. You can use a Phillips driver in a Pozidriv screw, but to get the best benefit you will need a matching Pozidriv driver instead. The possibility of user error due to driver size mismatch remains.
Note that the opposite is not true; using a Pozidriv driver to drive a Phillips screw will do even more damage than a Phillips driver ever could when the screw bottoms out, on top of damaging the driver itself.
Torx screws are far better, and unlike Phillips and Pozidriv, the wrong size Torx bit will simply either completely not fit, or wiggle and spin fairly freely. If it does spin due to being undersized, the only damage you're risking is usually to the driver, leaving the screw still usable and removable.
Note that the usual caveats about torque apply. If you're using an impact driver that kicks out over 200 Nm on its highest setting, you'd better be using a driver and a screw rated for that, regardless of what you end up using. Or you will snap something either way.
Torx is pretty much impossible to mess up short of overtightening it.
screw pilot holes are supposed to be smol.
In a prior life, for a number of years, I designed and built television studios (think datacenter, but more fun). In this context, aside from the technical equipment design, installation and commissioning, we often had to install highly customized pieces of technical furniture. Being an entrepreneur, I was not going to let a potentially nice profit center get through my fingers. So, we jumped right in to design and fabricate custom studio furniture for our clients.
We built hundreds of pieces over many years. The very issue this specialized bit seeks to address was present every day, during building and installation of nearly everything we built. The simplest solution was to always have two tools: A drill and a driver. Sometimes you have two or more drills, each pre-loaded with the required bit size. The single driver could drive any screw, so you only needed one.
That worked very well. To this day, decades later, that's exactly what I do when I work on any project, be it furniture making for home or home remodeling. It works. It's simple and you save a lot of time.
We also tried various versions of quick release drill-bit and screw-bit holders. They work, but it is far easier to have a power drill and a power screw driver and just go.
Oh, yes, and the drill bit portion of this invention is likely terrible, particularly if you need some degree of precision. There's a reason drill bits have a sharp or somewhat sharp point. And, for the same reason, this bit is likely to tear-up screws.
Side point: I rarely use Philips screws any more. They absolutely suck. Torx is the way to go. You can but Torx head construction screws at Home Depot these days. They are strong (drywall screws suck), easy to drive and can even take the abuse of an impact driver if you need to go faster.
I often use two drills, or a drill and a screwdriver, when I'm doing a lot. My impact driver is mostly for situations where I need more force.
I think a lot of the frustration with using a drill to drive screws is just that the adjustable chuck is annoying to use with a hex shank driver bit, which is solved by drills with interchangeable chuck heads such as Festool's drills with their FastFix chuck system, the Bosch 12v small driver, or the Milwaukee installation driver.
Sometimes I will use a drill bit with a hex shank, which is nice for swapping out but more expensive. I usually don't end up replacing them .
Also I think a lot of people have both a drill and an impact driver because they come in a sets at a bit of a discount.
Secondly, the head of a screw is by necessity much larger than the body. So you're going to end up drilling pilots too large for the screw, or else have an extremely weak bite on the head and round it out with any torque at all.
Changing bits on a modern keyless chuck takes about 5 seconds. Throw one in your lips while you use the other. Or if you're like me and find yourself a power tool hoarder, just use a separate drill or impact for each.
https://www.montanabrandtools.com/products/modular-drill-and...
If you’re doing large amounts of countersink fastening into hardwood (where self-piloting will split and self-countersinking will splinter) then you’ll go through drivers and drills real fast.
In every other case, a 3/8” diameter drill bit is going to need a fastener with a ridiculous diameter, large enough to have a bolt head head of a Philips head.
I would never buy one of these, let alone for $20.
2. Phillips needs to die. Maybe he can make that bit in Robertson. Or nearly anything else, really.
- I think self drilling screws are much more of a timesaver.
- Drill driver combis cannot have the same durability than separate bits, since driver bits are made of softer or at least more springy steel than drills.
- Also the sharpness of the combi can be a problem for the screw.
- Also torx bits will not jump over, while philips will now and then, and hence wear out more quickly.
Now it will just strip and then drill out the screw itself.
personally I go the OTHER way - I like to use a decent clutch setting and better exact driver <-> fastener connection
like: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N2KJY77
or torx / star / allen depending
closest I've gotten to multi-use driver bit is the flip phillips <-> flat double-ended bit and similar (just so I can carry one driver around sometimes)
More substantively this is too big a drill bit for the pilot holes for the screw size it fits... so it won't act as a tool-change timesaver.
Also, forget phillips for new construction. Torx is much nicer.
Phillips has the annoying property that it is designed to cam out. That's OK for hand tools but generally ruins the bit when used in a power tool.