All right you perverts, this is not about what you think it is (and leave my wife out of this). 
Why do screw heads, especially Phillips head screws, strip out? All you end up with is a useless screw stuck in the wall with a round crater in its head. What causes this, why would someone make a screw head out of soft metal?
If you look at a Phillips screw, you see that the act of turning it with a bit tends to force the driver up out of the socket, and thus the force of turning is applied where there is less metal. Same with slotted screws, where the slot is often tapered at the top slightly so the bit can fit in.
Torx™ bits don’t suffer from this effect, and that’s one reason I prefer to use them over Phillips or Slot screws.
The screws are not really made out of ‘soft metal’, but a standard screw is not really super-strong stuff. You can buy much stronger screws however.
You’re using too much power. If you have a clutch on your drill/driver, set it lower. If not, stop as you get close to getting the screw in, then give the driver short bursts of power to finish the job.
Anthracite is right about the Torx screws. This is also true of squarehead screws. Unfortunately, they can be hard to find in some areas.
One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.
Phillips head screws were designed that way to keep people from torquing them too tightly. If you’re installing them, don’t push so hard. If you’re trying to get them out, use a GOOD screwdriver with the right size head and some WD-40.
How about this - I have a video game from my youth that was put together entirely with screws with a triangular hole in their heads! Where the hell do you find one of those?
Question for the (metallic) screw mavens: I have a Black and Decker steam iron with what looks like a #10 Torx screw but a Torx screwdriver doesn’t fit nor does any of the many Allen wrenches I have tried. Is there a screw head that looks like a Torx but isn’t?
I, also, have wondered about that.
Being a somewhat inept handyman, I’ve had Phillips head screws strip out on me, forcing me to rip the thing out with vice grips or pound it in with a hammer. Slotted screws drive me almost to homicide when working in tight spaces or hard materials.
I mean, why not add just a .32nd of an inch more depth to the damn things? I’ve even taken a Dremel cutter and deepened the slot on some screws! Plus, there’s, what, like 800 different Phillips head slot sizes forcing one to buy 50 pounds of assorted screw drivers? I use a power driver – and one of those round containers full of assorted Phillips head tips. (Naturally, the one you loose is the one you’ll need most.)
As for why they don’t use harder material, the answer is cost. Harder material is more difficult to machine, which means higher manufacturing costs. Check out a well-stocked hardware store and you will see bolts and screws of varying hardness and price.
By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever had a hex key screw (is that the right term?) strip out. This is consistent with what Anthracite said - hex keys don’t creep up out of the screw as you turn it, so they don’t strip. Also, their design forces you to use the correct sized tool.
I’ve seen tons (literally) of hex screws stripped out. Them’s one of the major casualties of aircraft maintenance.
Regardless, they are MUCH more difficult to strip than are a philips head, or a slotted screw.
The key is to use a sharp tool (not all worn down and rounded, that’ll help your drive to slip when you’re torquing). When torquing the screw, apply direct pressure to the tool. Lean into it if you have to. The harder you’re pressing into the screw, the less likely it is to strip from slipping.
For really tough Phillips screws, you can try using an impact driver. It is a heavy steel tool that you put bits in one end, and hit on the other end with a hammer. The hammer forces the bit deep into the screw head, while torquing it at the same time. Typically, it will either loosen the screw, or tear the head off, or strip it. It is often a tool of last resort.
I have seen (and had to deal with) some screws that are a bit different. I’ve seen straight-hex holes (not Torx, ‘Allen screws’ to be turned with ‘allen keys’), star-shaped holes with six points (Torx?), and star-shaped holes exactly the same shape but with a bump in the middle (Torx?) to force you to buy a new star-driver that has the corresponding hole. I don’t know if one of these is called “Torx” and the other is called something else, but my nomination for the star-with-bump head is “Evil Torx” since the only reason for its existence is to piss you off and force you to drive to the hardware store.
I have turned star-screws with allen keys in a pinch, but of course with the Evil Torx this is impossible. Just remember, you can just about always take out your Dremel and make it into a slot-head. That’s what I had to do when my uncle-in-law used a Makita with a phillips bit to try to drive an allen screw. He kept at it for a good five minutes wondering why it wasn’t going anywhere, until I noticed the other screws were all hexes. By that time, the screw he was working on had a perfect cone shaped head, to which it was impossible to apply any torque.
If you have a Torx driver without the hole and an Evil Torx screw (with the bump), you’ll find the driver won’t fit. Or, it is possible you have a metric screw and an english tool or vice versa. I’m not familiar enough with star/Torx sizes to know if this makes sense, but I know with allen wrenches you can have english or metric.
Oh, and Anthracite, I had Mattel Football II and Baseball which had the triangle head screws! Pisses me off when people indicate such an obvious contempt for the consumer. What’s the worst that can happen, I open my game and get a 9V shock to my index finger? Is that really a liability issue?
Here’s an article that might interest you: Why did this guy Phillips think we needed a new type of screw?
It’s called a “security torx” and is designed to keep you out of whatever it’s in. Get a small center punch and a hammer, and break the little bump off.
I think that’s a little difficult in practice. You can buy drivers for them after all.
I’ve also seen one-way screws, mostly in public restrooms, designed such that you can screw them in, but if you try to screw them out, the screwdriver just slips out of the slot. They just take an ordinary straight-blade, though.
In addition to the six-pointed stars, I once saw a five-pointed star somewhere. Frankly, I don’t know why they care.
One problem that you may be coming across is that Phillips screws are not the same as crosspoint screws although they look very similar.
The tips have differant angles for starters and then there is the matter of the small spurs at 45[sup]o[/sup] to the main cross part which is found in Phillips but not on crosspoints and last of all the cross part itself is differant with the crosspoints having a slightly tapered cross compared to the Phillips.
Most times people will use the two drivers interchangeably and most times it doesn’t really matter but when the torque is on the incompatabilities show up.
Oftentimes people will use a wrong size driver too but the next nearest will often do the job.
Crosspoints and Phillips wear out but you cannot regrind them to shape whereas flatblades you can and then case harden them.
As for the triangular shaped screwheads on gameboys, I just grind a small screwy to fit in and it works well enough, but there is usually not much you can do inside them if they go wrong anyway.
They’re used by Satanists or anti-semites …
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- A standard Phillips screw has a taper of about 45 degrees while a JIS screw (Japanese Industrial Standard) has about a 38 degree taper. Sometimes a standard Phillips can get a JIS in and out, but JIS screwdrivers won’t work in standard screws very well.
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- The main reason that companies come up with these oddball fasteners is so that if a product is returned, they can tell if it’s been tampered with or not, because most people will not be able to find the right driver for the screws. If you look far and wide, most all can be found retail. - MC
Oh, also, an Allen driver (hex head) ought to be able to get a triangular-head screw in and out, if the size is right. You’d need to be more careful about matching the size than if you used a triangular head, though.
I doubt there’s a commercially available screw for which Mcmaster-Carr doesn’t have the driver. Bristol, butterfly, clutch, Frearson, hex, JIS, Philips, Pozidriv, Read and Prince, Robertson, scrulox, slotted, spanner,spline, square, tamper-resistant, Torq-set, Torx, tri-wing, tri-groove …