The Strip Club

                Being in our school’s Robotics Team, I found one of the biggest frustrations on working on the robot where we would accidentally strip a screw. What is really cool is that someone made this, which creates more contact between the screw head and the screwdriver and makes the screw much more difficult to strip. I will also admit that one of my first rookie mistakes in trying to drill a screw into wood was that I had not drilled before and so when I was forced to because everyone else was busy, I did not drill the hole first, instead I just tried drilling the screw into the wood where they said I was supposed to drill. Naturally, anyone who does know about drilling would know that the wood, instead of having a hole in it, actually split into two pieces down the middle. Luckily, these new screws save any future user from the embarrassment I went through because these have self-drilling parts to them.

                Although it is not mentioned in the article, it is only obvious that these screws will cost slightly more than the standard Phillips screw, but I think that the price difference should be affordable and comparatively better. Since these are screws, and a standard project needs a lot of screws, not including the ones dropped, lost, or stripped. Thus, if these new screws were not cheap and affordable, it would not be worth the price. Not only does that bring the price down, but these are screws. Screws are all supposed to be uniform so they have to be mass-produced in a factory, which as we all know from history with Henry Ford and Levittown, will drive down the price sharply. How I think these will turn out comparatively is that the ones able to be stripped are incandescent light bulbs while the ones that are much more difficult to strip are like compact fluorescent light bulbs. Although one may be cheaper up front, in the long run, there is going to be a higher need for them due to how often the screw is stripped. Thus, over time it would be more cost efficient. A big problem for stripping screws is that it is hard to get out. This invention, although great, is kind of a hidden insult to people, because all these new inventions are all geared towards assuming people are becoming more lazy and so appeals to that aspect, which I am. I admit that I am extremely lazy, but I do not like other people pointing it out.