Squares are a bit better now, with higher hardness steels and stainless steels. My house has a lot of work done with them in the 70s, and they tend to be already stripped, or rusted enough to strip the moment I try to remove them.
Theyre still transferring nearly all the force on 4 small parts of the surface area (in the corners) that is pretty tangential to the rotation (meaning more of the energy is going into pushing the head into deforming, as opposed to turning the head. That plus the 90° corners the force is in make for easier stripping.
Still way better than a standard taper sided Philips though. although rarely you come across a square sided Philips (so the hole is a cross with no taper to it) that are always easy to work with.
Squares are a bit better now, with higher hardness steels and stainless steels. My house has a lot of work done with them in the 70s, and they tend to be already stripped, or rusted enough to strip the moment I try to remove them.
Theyre still transferring nearly all the force on 4 small parts of the surface area (in the corners) that is pretty tangential to the rotation (meaning more of the energy is going into pushing the head into deforming, as opposed to turning the head. That plus the 90° corners the force is in make for easier stripping.
Still way better than a standard taper sided Philips though. although rarely you come across a square sided Philips (so the hole is a cross with no taper to it) that are always easy to work with.