Certain things like bikes, cars, and furniture use hexagonal bolts for fastening. Hex bolts can only be used with the right diameter key and they don’t slip like Phillips and Flatheads. Also, the hexagonal tip keeps bolts from falling so you don’t need a magnet to hold your fasteners. Furthermore, it’s easy to identify which Allen key you need for each fastener, and you can use ballpoint hex keys if you need to work at an angle.
Since the hex bolt design is so practical, why don’t we use this type of fastener for everything? Why don’t we see hex wood screws and hex drywall screws ?
Edit : I’m asking about fasteners in general (like screws, bolts, etc)
In: Engineering
Different screw are used with different intentions generally speaking…. You want the right tool for the right application.
Mostly it a engineering thing to prevent over torque or enable a degree of precision balanced against cost of manufacturing.
drywall screws. always Phillips. cheap to produce and its design enables the screw to automatically detach from the screw head once it reaches a certain depth. a highly desirable feature with drywall installation. even if you dont have a depth gauge dealio when you are driving Phillips screws, the nature of the causes fhe bit to pop out of the screw at certain torque ranges.
torx heads are very good at precision adjustment and also very good at resisting stripping. These are frequently used in applications where a specific inch lbs torque spec is required. Electronics, Rifle Scopes are common applications for torx heads. the are expensive to produce and use in manufacturing though so unless you NEED those traits, you dont use those when designing a product
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