Printing issues with pdf files made from CAD drawings

[rkhmncfo]

We are using Acrobat Pro DC.  We are having an issue when trying to print certain files made from CAD drawings (not ours) and we cannot figure out what the issue is.  They look crystal clear on the screen, but when we print them there are lines missing, text obscured, etc.  If we take a screen shot of the pdf and convert the screen shot to a pdf and print the screen shot, they print out fine.

We tried the preflight to make sure that all lines were greater than .14 wide and there were no issues found with the pdf, so that is not the cause.  Any help would be appreciated.

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

You've alrady done what I would have recommended: Replace hairlines with lines wider than one pixel. This however would not explain the obscured text. Does your printer have different language emulations (PostScript, PCL5, PCL6, ...)? If so, try a different printer language and see if that fixes the problem. Also, my experience over the years (decades...) is that oftentimes a printing problem can be fixed by upgrading the printer driver to the latest version. 

[rkhmncfo]

Thanks.  We use a Toshiba MFD that has a ton of options and I have tried so many.  I think I have tried printing this around 40-50 times.  I will try to see if I can change the printer language.

We had the customer send us another pdf and same results.  I really should not say the text is obscured, but not printing out.  Almost any L, T, I, H or E is missing, partially missing or barely legible when printed.  Numbers, such as 0 and 1 only have a portion of them printed.  I took a picture of relevant portion of the printed version and screenshot of that same area to show it better.

[rkhmncfo · Accepted solution]

UPDATE:

After trying several other things, I had a suspicion it was the device (the Toshiba MFD) and called in a service company and indeed that was the issue.  The internal mirrors were dirty and professional cleaning of them resolved the issue!

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Glad you figured it out.