You clearly haven’t had to screw a flathead screw.
Anyone that’s dicked around with those little bastards starts hating life after about thirty seconds. A fastener I can screw in a without having to be perfectly in line with the shaft? Yes please! I don’t care if it’s a shitty Phillips screw, sign me up. I’d even take those goofy square Canadian screws. Hell, anything is better than flathead.
I challenge you to find a screw worse to use than a flathead screw.
I agree … and if I ever had the choice … I’d go with Robertson or Torx for all my screws
But we were talking about (I thought that is what we were talking about) is what common basic screw design would be common to appear in a world where no screws existed. A slot is simple and easy to make … just take a metal saw and cut one slot and voila you can turn it with a simple flat screwdriver head … simple to make, simple to reproduce … a pain in ass? yes? a universal torture device that will make your life miserable? yes?
But if we ever end up in a situation where we have no hardware stores, no manufactured supplies, no heavy machinery, no metal stamping equipment, no heavy duty presses then cutting a simple slot across the top of a threaded rod is the easiest way to make your own screwhead and start working with using your own homemade screw driver … a pain in the ass? yes … but at least you can screw things together after the world has ended.
This probably doesn’t exist but is probably worse the a flat head. What about a friction screw where the top is like rubber and to unscrew you need to rotated using a driver with another flat rubber head
Torx > Hex > Robertson > Pozidriv > Phillips > Slot.
This is not (just) the ramblings of a mad nerd, but objective fact derived from contact area between screwdriver and screw.
In practice hex does have one situational advantage over Torx, namely that they are almost always tightened with Allen keys which are more torque-y and can be used in tight spaces. For every other application Torx wins. Every other head type is strictly inferior and only exists for legacy or penny-saving reasons.
What they don’t say is that the smaller the features on the contact, the easier it is to strip them. This almost reverses the order on your post depending on the way you tighten the screw.
Easiest to manufacture tho (probably, I’m not an expert. But if you were to make a fastener with rudimentary tools, Phillips seems like it would likely be the easiest.)
Easiest, yes. And wheels are easier than repulserlifts. If sometime said “Ya know, greasing axels sucks balls. Let’s invent something better”, they probably developed something better than the shittiest screw head in the history of sentience.
But that’s just, like, my opinion man
