Have you ever baked a cake? It's easy! Just rip open a box of cake mix, dump it into
a bowl, add some water, an egg, and some oil, then stir it around a bit, pour it into a
cake pan, and bake it for 40 min at 325°F. A piece of cake, so to speak.
As long as you follow directions, the cake is likely to turn out fine--not too dry and not
too moist. Say you're in a hurry, though, so you try to speed up the process. Instead
of following the directions, you decide to spread the batter out over a cookie sheet
and bake it at 650°F for only 20 min. You don't have to be a pastry chef to know what
will happen. In no time, you will have the fire department visiting you, and not for cake
and coffee.
Drying a screen is not unlike baking a cake. Screen drying is a basic prepress step
that seems like a no-brainer on the surface. But because it appears so simple, many
printers tend to gloss over the factors that lead to a correctly dried screen. Consider
the following scenarios: