Hi Pete,
In answer to your question, yes. It depends on the printer type, os, and original file. True-type fonts were an attempt to straighten it out, but if you think about it, a 24pin dot matrix printer, for example, can not produce the precise locations of dots, and even more basic, a daisy wheel can have entirely different founts to the screen. Some print drivers will allow settings different to others, in particular page boundaries, paper sizes, etc. Pdf's can print as image or as pdf encoded (not the proper terminology) but printing as image generally works OK, but slower. It is not clear to me, if you are always printing to pdf, but if you are noticing a difference in PDF prints, then it could be in the default print settings being changed when other software is printed. Also, printing to pdf, is it the adobe acrobat print driver, or something else? In the past, I've had numerous pages that wouldn't print, until I set it to print as image (or whatever it was called. (It was acrobat 5, maybe fifteen years ago? Maybe quite modern compared to the kit that you say you are forced to use... ;-)
Best wishes,
Ray
edit to add this link -https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/quick-fix-print-pdf-image.html But probably only if you have genuine adobe pdf/acrobat
