The shale shake's screen is that piece of equipment that separates the cuttings from the drilling mud.

It has to produce dry cuttings without further degrading them, it has to be sand blinding resistant and it has to last as long as possible.

To achieve these performances goals, real-life trials are the right way to ensure the screens perform as designed.

Heavy load of solids and hydrocyclons overflow are another part of the testing as well.

When the drilling reaches sandy formations, the sand grains might be the same size as the opening of the screen and plug them like the picture below shows. That is called sand blinding.

Being sand blinding resistant requires a lot of technology to be incorporated into a screen panel.

After the extensive screen life trials, the broken or worn-out screens are really valuable. They are carefully analyzed by engineers to understand how to make better screen pannels.

Same as me, you know now that the screen panels are, indeed, an amazing piece of equipment that incorporates a lot of technology.