First Dumb Question - Torx

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Steve B in Vegas

+11mm Kyosho Hubs on the Mojave.
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Arrma RC's
  1. Mojave EXB
  2. Senton 3s
Newbie here. Looking over my Senton 3s BLX, my first question is why are we not using Torx heads on the screws? Looking at Hudy tools, ect, and while they look nice, they are still traditional Hex keyed heads. I realize that they would build tools to suit the screw types being used, but I'm surprised that there are not Torx heads being used, especially with the small screw sizes.

Is it because Torx heads would be much more prone to over torquing of the small screws?

We use Torx on some of our company products, and we are pushing to move completely to Torx for all fasteners which are for serviceable parts.

s.
 
Wouldn't it be nice? Im guessing it's cost, but who knows. They use the cheapest black oxide screws that rust very quickly, so I'm assuming torx would also add cost (being less common).

Hex tools are also still more common, so maybe they don't want to upset people by forcing them to buy a new set of tools.

But maybe only Arrma knows the real reason...
 
Wouldn't it be nice? Im guessing it's cost, but who knows. They use the cheapest black oxide screws that rust very quickly, so I'm assuming torx would also add cost (being less common).

Hex tools are also still more common, so maybe they don't want to upset people by forcing them to buy a new set of tools.

But maybe only Arrma knows the real reason...
Arrma and the 20 other radio control manufacturers you mean ?

I too have no idea why they don’t use torx.
 
Most of the time, companies will point out the cost. For us, it's actually wasn't the cost of the new Torx screws, but the cost of the inventory of those old Hex key screws. When I first started at my company, we had a flat-head screws on an item, and I railed against them to convert to hex keyed screws ( this was 10 years ago ), and the owner of the company asked what we should do with our old inventory of flat-head screws. They came in pairs, and we had over 5000 pairs.

So, we met in the middle and used up the flat-head inventory and converted to hex keyed. As a joke, they presented me with the very first pair of hex keyed screws our company offered. Fast forward 10 years and now we are converting to Torx drive heads.

I would have to guess that this is probably the root of the issue, but these are tiny and cheap screws on the cars, and it would not be that hard to convert once old inventory goes away. Of course we had to include a Torx wrench with the new products, but this is common place in our industry. You can get basic Torx wrenches for less than $0.50 each in volume.

I'm for sure not knocking ARRMA or any of the others, but when we are looking at over $100 for a good set of wrenches, it makes little sense to make super nice tools for outdated fastener designs. Just update the screw heads to Torx, and even basic torx tools will easily outlast high-quality hex heads. You also need fewer tools ( no metric vs SAE ). I guess this is a long-winded idea to the thought that we are fixing the wrong part of the equation. It's not the tools are bad, its that the key design is outdated.

Here is a bit of extra reading for those who can't sleep ( like me ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torx
 
It could be worse we could still be using Phillips like the low end Traxxas and Chinese cars do.

I did a quick search on Google for M3x12 torx head screw and so far all I can find are stainless screws for security cameras.
 
I'm gonna reach out to some of our vendors in Germany and see what they can come up with. The only worry is that sometimes the ball-head on the hex key helps get into some tricky angles, but I'm still gonna look into this.

I'm thinking of a carbon steel which is black nitrided rather than that terrible cheap oxide.

s
 
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