Of course, it's impossible to be "sure" you haven't seen something (as opposed to "I remember seeing"...). But, like I said, I don't recall ever having seen a screw head like the ones in that photo. Next time I'm in Lowes I'll see if I can find any for sale...
The drive bits I've seen dozens of (and after mistaking them for Philips once, I learned that lesson!).
Lowe's? If they have it, it will be in those overpriced trays were they sell you one screw at a time.
Fastenal, or other industrial suppliers would be a better place to look.
I once saw the inside of the first Compaq "transportable" computer. It was loaded with 5-lobed Torx.
Cheers! Rich
Well, sure. I'm not making a claim that they don't exist at all; I'm saying that in actual practice they seem rare enough that I can't remember ever seeing one. And I wouldn't expect to see them in the common brick&mortar retail parts sources, either. Neither implies in any way that I think they'd be impossible to find if I really wanted to for some reason.
Like I said in another post: HP used a lot of them in their test equipment. I have a lot of them from junked hospital equipment, and from a couple parts cabinets that fell off workbenches at my last employer. They decided it wasn't worth the time to sort them out and put into a new cabinet. They gave me about 10 pounds of floor sweepings from under the bulk hardware area, as well.
Bravo, Ig!
Well, I put the "virtually" in as protection against someone coming in and calling me a liar since they, personally, had cammed out thousands, if not millions, of phillips head screws using a hammer impact driver.
Having used this type of driver on more scres than I care to count, I can say that it never cammed out on me. But, Like you said, you could tear the head to pieces. Of course, if the screw was decent quality to begin with, having a shcs in its place wouldn't have done much good. You'd have snapped off, or twisted the wrench, or rounded out the socket.
The real problem here is steel screws in aluminum castings, which is a great market for helicoils. A quick fix, btw, for stripped 6mm bolts in aluminum in low-torque applications, is to just replace them with
1/4-20. They just screw right in. Did this on a LOT of Honda CB-450 valve covers.
GE used a lot of them in their commercial two-way radios during the late 70's and probably into the 80's. That was my first run-in with them. Had to buy a couple special screwdrivers for them (still have them too ;). You could get away with a regular phillips most of the time, but when you came across one that was really tight... It looked a bit tacky too, messing up the heads on screws when you were suppose to be a certified repair facility.
Watch for some old GE Master II type radios (GE called a lot of radios "Master" something) and then take a good look at the screws used.
Yeah, but they didn't _cam_ out, did they?
I once used a manual impact driver to try to remove some steel Phillips head screws from aluminum. They didn't hog out and the bit didn't cam out: the "splines" on the hardened bits were chewed off.
Bob
I seem to recall this discussion over the differences between phillips and posidrive has come up before and it was mentioned that the phillips screw was designed to cam out as at the time of their introduction for aircraft use torque limiting drivers were not available or at least not common. In the case of posidrive, which was introduced later, it was intended to not cam out easily and even allow slight off axis drive.
(...)
"Mastr". They couldn't afford the 'e'.
--Winston
Speaking of electronics fasteners, anyone remember Sony "slot-n-dot" screws? A slotted screw head with a hole in the middle. A proper screwdriver had a pin in the middle that mated with the hole and kept it aligned. You could seriously lean on the screwdriver without worrying about it slipping. I liked them.
Further, people saying "just use an impact driver" have never tried doing so on a #1 Phillips screw on a flimsy piece of sheet metal floating atop the headlight, deep inside the grill.
ELECTRIC impact, not physical hammer type. ;)
Back up the sheetmetal tab with a stick to give it some more stability for the job. 3rd and 4th hands are usually necessary, but I've done it alone before back in my wrenchin' days. I've never seen a #1 phillips screw on a headlight retainer ring before, though. All #2, IIRC.
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