Perhaps you have a cell
phone that you want to open or even a broken Xbox 360. You think to yourself,
well it is already broken, maybe I can take it apart and fix it. You start
to look it over and you notice all of the screws holding it together look
odd and you do not think that you have a tool in your arsenal that would
fit any of these tiny little screws.
You hit a roadblock. Now you can not get inside unless you use force.
You look closely at these screws and notice a star pattern. Some people
instantly refer to this as a star screw but the proper name is a torx
screw. In case you wondering how to pronounce it. It rhymes with forks.
Now you need a tool that will turn this funny six sided screw head.
The tool you need is a torx screwdriver.There are many different sizes
as you may have already noticed and you will need to get the right one
or even better you can get a whole torx screwdriver set.
First you might be wondering Why they use a screw like this? This screw
was designed to make things easier on the tools in the factories. If you
familiar with a phillips head screwdriver then you know that once the
screw it tight the screw driver head slips out of the screw. This keeps
you from over tightening the screw and stripping it or the driver itself.
The torx screw was designed to achieve the correct torque every time without
damaging the tool, screw head or part. This extends the life of the tool
in the factory. The only way that this helps you, is that the factory
spends less on tooling which makes the part cheaper to manufacture thus
saving you some money.
The sizing is measured in a pretty straight forward system. The first
symbol in the size is the letter "T". Can you guess what it
stands for? Hmmmmm. TORX. The next symbol is a number which identifies
the size of the screw head. So the size would be Torx T8. Only the correct
driver size will fit into the correct screw head. This way there is no
possible way to strip the screw or damage the tool. There are some Torx
variations out there but they are very uncommon. Now that you know more
about the torx screwdriver you can get the right one for the job and get
back to fixing your favorite piece of electronic equipment.
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