Philips screws are awful. They strip if you look at them wrong. Flatheads should only be used on thumbscrews just in case you need a little extra torque from a screwdriver.

Torx and Hex are excellent.

If you've tried to do any large amount of work with slotted, you'll know that it belongs in Mental Disorders. I'll take Six-Lobe/Torx over phillips or slotted any day of the week.

You can tell a shitpost is a shitpost when it is entirely wrong

Slotted is absolute shit. Philips is acceptable if you must live in the 1900s.

Torx all the way. Every other type should be illegal and punishable by death of perpetrator's extended family.

I'm sorry, calling Robertson "square" is insulting to a superior screw design and fuck you for even pretending it isn't.

There is one screw on this chart that I have a mortal hatred for. Just one. That being the fat Phillips (called "Phillips/square" on this chart meme thing).

I have no idea why, but some companies can't resist the sadistic urge to put tiny versions of these fuckers on equipment that should just use a torque or Phillips screw head. But no, they want you to truly suffer. Because they don't stop there: they make the fragile little fuckers out of NICKEL. Which means they are extra malleable and prone to strip if you so much as look at them the wrong way. So imagine you need to replace a hard drive on a RAID-type storage pool that's already down two spares and you can't fucking get the drive out of it's sled because the vendor not only hired a bodybuilder to tighten the screws, but simultaneously chose the worst possible metal just for giggles and chose the screw head that they no body will have the proper bit for and will inevitably use a normal phillips on until it strips.

I now have a ritual procedure of putting every drive that gets replaced in the coldest cold aisle in the datacenter for at least 5 minutes just to make these fucking screws less likely to ruin my day.

Fuck whoever invented the fat phillips, even the lowest ring of hell is too good for them.

Socket (hexagon) and Robinson (square) are hyper common standards. You use Robinson for wood working due to the shape offering more resistance for high speed driving, and you use a socket with an allen key in order to get precise high torque hand tightening. IMO Phillips and Slot are the worst common standards due to stripping and sliding.

I'm American and even i can agree Robertson are the goat.

Phillips and flat suck. Not enough surface area on Phillips, resulting in stripped screws. And getting centered on flat sucks.

Robertson drive, just pop your driver in and it's self centering, lots of surface contact to drive, and lots of meat on the head to prevent stripping. Anything more than 4 edges is unnecessary.

Where my hex fans at?

nah torx and hex are great

Let me introduce a fresh hell: we call them Apex screws.

No thanks. I will stick to my torx and hex, and they better be in metric.

• Don't use over or undersized screwdrivers, especially on smaller electronics.
• Stop torquing while you are still ahead.
• Be especially careful if the metals are soft.
• Keep your driver perpendicular. Better drivers can make this easier.
• Better to back out the screw and try again if it isn't going in smooth on something threaded. Check for debris and burrs. If you need to apply more pressure, do so carefully.
• I have found that for small stuff, getting nicer drivers makes a huge difference.

Penta-lobes for some of the small electronics are funny I guess, but they don't bother me as long as I have a bit for it. Main thing is to understand why some of these different shapes exist.

Torx is the only screw I buy when I buy screws. All the phillipses and other shit screws I have were included with some other shit I bought.

I actually really like Philips with slot because it's just a Philips with a slot for when the Philips gets stripped so the two on the bottom right corner are the best in my opinion because if one ether the flat head or the Philips gets stripped you can just grab a ratchet or spanner

where are they called slotted, I have only ever heard them called flat.

You'll call a Phillips a Phillips but not a Robertson a Robertson or an Allen an Allen, smh

Whoever drew this deserves eternal damnation!

Phillips are for boring fuckin normies who can't chooch

My boy, you do NOT do Robinson dirty like that.

I'm seeing a lot of people here claiming that the Philips head was originally designed to cam out/strip to prevent a transfer of force sufficient to twist the head off. While I agree this does sound logically plausible, I could find no reference to such features in the original patent: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/0f/28/e3/3e3075abbb9779/US2046837.pdf 🤷‍♂️

I submit that every screw in the world should be the six lobe slotted. For the stuff that’s not tamper-resistant, anyway.

You have the six lobe for actually building things, because fuck Phillips head screws, and the slot for convenience where you could use anything from a coin to a knife.

Here in the US, certain brands of deck screws for outdoor use are six lobe and they come with the driver bit in the box because everybody has the damn Phillips and flat head screwdrivers! But to be fair, if you have a bunch of tools you probably also have a set of torx drivers.

Pozidriv is clearly superior to Phillips

Op has never done any serious screw work it seems

I'm a slotted screw HATER

Everything electrical uses them and it's a nightmare keeping the screwdriver aligned properly to try and take them out at a good speed

My favorite would be square drive but they always seem to make those out of recycled ham sandwiches or something

if you need to unscrew a torx screw and you don't have any torx bits, you can try using a flathead. it won't work and you'll probably get hurt doing it, but you can try it.