Plastic screwdriver, cross (Philips), 96 mm, 50 pcs/pack

A screwdriver made entirely in plastic with a Philips type cross slot and a length of 96 mm, packed 50 pieces per pack. The whole pack weighs 0.84 kg, which gives just under 17 grams per driver; that says something about how easy the tool is to carry along, hand out and forget in your pocket without noticing.

Why a screwdriver in plastic? Because the screws it is going to drive are in plastic too. Plastic screws for paper based display boards are tightened by hand with moderate torque, and there a light plastic driver is exactly the right tool; it gives enough grip in the cross slot without inviting the brute force that a long steel driver or a power screwdriver easily produces. If it slips against a printed surface it also rarely leaves marks, which cannot be said about hardened steel.

The 96 mm format makes the driver compact enough to travel with every delivery. And that is exactly how many sign makers use it: a driver is put in the box together with the unassembled display, so the store staff at the receiving end can assemble it without hunting for tools. When the display is later taken down, the tool for the job is already on site. The fifty pack is sized for exactly that workflow; one tool per shipment rather than one per workshop.

Exhibition builders have a different pattern. There it is about equipping the whole assembly team with the same simple tool and avoiding the hunt for lost drivers after every setup; with 50 pieces in the box it does not matter that one or two go home in a jacket pocket. Store fitters in chains solve rollouts the same way, where many stores assemble at the same time without the central warehouse having to send out expensive tool kits.

The cross slot is standard Philips type, the same grip the heads of the display screws are made for. The driver works with the plastic screws in 30 and 55 mm from the same accessory range and with the eye screws when needed, even though the eye there is usually its own best grip. The point is that the whole mounting system can be assembled and taken apart with one single cheap hand tool.

A piece of working advice: let the plastic driver set the limit for the tightening. If you cannot tighten any more with it, the screw is tight enough; the core of the paper board gains nothing from higher torque, it only takes damage. It is a built in torque limit of the simplest kind, and it works surprisingly well in practice.

The tool is black, takes minimal room in the box and stands being stored for as long as you like. If a driver should break it is replaceable at a cost that does not even show in the project calculation, and the plastic is sorted as plastic the day it has served its time.

The tool matters just as much when taking down as when assembling. Displays without a tool on site are in practice torn down by force when the campaign is over, and then the chance to sort the material cleanly disappears; with a driver nearby everything is unscrewed and the board goes where it should. Putting a driver in the delivery is in other words not only service, but a condition for the recycling idea behind paper displays to work all the way.

Compared with sending out steel tools the calculation is simple; the plastic driver costs a fraction, weighs almost nothing in the shipment and does no damage if it ends up in the wrong hands.

Do you need tools and screws in the same order? Contact us and we will put it together.