The lowly allen wrench
I just finished putting together a couple of Morrow Chairs to add to the four chairs like them already in the kitchen of our Eichler.
The chairs are exceptionally well designed and packaged. They require a single tool to assemble. Included is that tool, a an allen wrench.
An Allen Wrench is simply just an l-shaped, 6 sided, piece of hardened steel. In other words, it is about the cheapest tool you could possibly manufacture.
But, coincidentally, through that cheap simplicity comes an incredibly effective tool. Unlike a screwdriver (either flavor), allen wrenches grip the bolt being driven quite well with virtually no chance of slipping. As long as you use the right size, that is.
Update: It was torx, not allen in the titanium powerbook. Aluminum powerbooks seem to use philips for the screws on the side and allen for the screws on the top and screen. I’m sure there was a very long and intense discussion about that, at some point (as there should have been!). The Wikipedia entry on Screws is quite the good read, though it is missing a few screw types.
Now, I’m sure the various build-it-yourself furniture manufacturers have glommed onto allen wrenches and the corresponding bolts primarily as a cost cutting measure. It is damned convenient to us consumers that the choice happens to coincide with a higher quality assembly experience.
Another prominent build-it-yourself furniture manufacturer is Anthro. They make truly amazing desks. They also use allen wrench headed bolts throughout and, conveniently, include both a hand tool and an electric screwdriver bit for assembly purposes. Being high end, Anthro includes one of the allen wrenches that ends in a little ball instead of being straight.
The ball-end is really nice if you have to turn a bolt from an angle. However, this is simply not necessary when assembling a desk. Worse, the damned ball end leads to less surface area and a looser grip on the bolt, leading to a much greater chance of accidentally stripping the bolt head.
So, this is one of the few times where a company spends a few extra pennies on trying to make the consumer experience superior only to actually make assembly potentially considerably more frustrating.
Fortunately, if you ever strip a bolt head on an Anthro cart– Something I have done many too many times across various office moves– there is an easy fix. Grab a Dremel Moto-Tool and slap on a cutting wheel.
With said wheel in place, simply cut a notch in the top of the bolt head such that you can use a regular screwdriver to remove the bolt. Or cut the entire bloody bolt head off. Once pieces are separated, you can easily grab the remaining bit with a vice grip and unscrew it.
Torx headed bolts/wrenches offer an even tighter grip with less chance of slipping, but are slightly more costly to manufacturer. Hence, you’ll rarely see assemble-it-yourself stuff that uses Torx bits, though they commonly appear in manufactured furniture such as Aeron chairs.
If you have made it this far, here is a bit of trivia. With the Titanium Powerbook, the first machines to be shipped into the field as demo units used philips headed screws for assembly. It wasn’t until the machines were massed produced that Apple moved to torx headed screws. T-6, to be exact, which is a nearly impossible size to find. (Thanks, Ben!)
July 1st, 2005 at 5:47 am
hey, in Canada we have three kinds of screwdrivers… flat head, phillips and Robertson (the square drive).. Robertson have been in use in Canada for years..
grips like an allen wrench.. awesome
July 1st, 2005 at 6:49 am
All the new PowerBooks use phillips as well. And we also use Robertson down here. At least, we used them to install the Hardi-backer board beneath the tile in the bathroom. Not terribly common, though, as they include a bit in a box of 100 screws.
July 1st, 2005 at 7:13 am
I guess that the biggest user of those screws (called Inbus over here) must be Ikea. Lots of their furniture are assembled using Inbus screws. Probably they aren’t as popular (or around for as long) over in the US as they are in Europe.
My TiBook has philips (which I had to look up, they’re just called ‘cross’ screws over here) holding the bottom plate and most of the inside stuff. Torx screws are only used at the side of the screen and, somewhat strangely at the screws holding the hard drive. So either this wasn’t for demo units only or for some reason I got one of those.
July 1st, 2005 at 9:58 am
Anthro desks are great (used them for years), but I’ve been a recent convert to the Biomorph (www.biomorphdesk.com) line, the Personal desk in particulat. A bit pricey, but the ability to adjust heights dynamically is a real godsend, and the maple plywood finish is the bee’s knees.
July 1st, 2005 at 10:51 am
Scott: I have run across a handful of Robertson screws in the US. Mostly on toys. There is also some wonky triangle shaped screw often used in similar contexts (usually, throwawy electronic toys).
SSP: Yeah — my TiBook was a pre-production unit from the first run of TiBooks. It seems that Apple switched between the two a few times throughout the cycle. Maybe it was production vs. refurb? Or different cycles in production? Manufacturing location? Who knows….
Chris: OOOhh…. those desks look awesome. I might have to go for one of the small ones (both for price and size) for the corner of my work room. That is, if I ever get around to cleaning the silly place out (it was the staging area for our move).
July 2nd, 2005 at 5:38 pm
Thought the TiBooks used Torx, not Allen; I’m a huge fan of both, though I think Torx is a bit of an improvement, albiet less common. The good Allen wrenches have a ball on the long part of the L that you can use to quickly spin it down, then you can use the solid end and longer lever to tighten it; no ball-end Torx wrenches, though…
July 2nd, 2005 at 10:56 pm
I’ve got an Anthro Console desk myself, because when I went to MacWorld in 1997, it was the coolest thing I saw on the show floor.
After six moves between various homes and offices, I’ve only managed to lose one screw, and crack two of the plastic shelf couplers. (BTW, Anthro was great about sending me replacements. They didn’t even charge me.)
One thing I thought I’d mention… There are two common screw types that look very similar, Phillips-head and Pozidriv. If you use a Pozidriv bit to drive a Phillips screw or vice versa, you’re much more likely to ruin the screw head, since the angle of the bit and the slots it engages won’t match.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw
-jcr