Problems with printing from the Mac: Spools and stops esp with multiple-slides-per-page PDFs

Hello,

I'd greatly appreciate some advice please. I have two printers, an HPLaserJet M281fdw and an Epson EcoTank ET-2750 and several Macbook pros, all fully updated with the latest OS. I also have various PC laptops (this sounds like a lot of computers but I have three kids, all studying and each preferring Mac whilst I have PCs for work).

Whilst the PCs print everything quickly and effortlessly on both printers, without any problems, all of the Macbook Pros are having the same printing issues with both printers. I have tried many things, ensuring all software and drivers are updated, using Airprint or using the bespoke printer software app, de-installing and re-installing the printers, resetting the printing system on the Mac, printing to PDF and trying to then print the new file, but I keep having the same couple of problems which are the following:

1) Sometimes (confusingly not always) when printing PDFs, the print job appears to be sent, it appears in the printer queue, the printer starts to spool but abruptly shuts down and the print job vanishes as if it has been completed. The only thing that fixes this is to shut down the printer and re-start and re-send the print job. In this case the first job prints ok (albeit a little slowly) but subsequent jobs fail to spool unless I go through the above printer restart procedure.

2) Even if straighforward printing of a PDF is working, if I choose to print four slides per page, the printer doesn't seem to be able to cope with whatever it's receiving and it either doesn't react at all or thinks about it forever - or at least for longer than I am able to wait. Either way it doesn't print. Interestingly, a reset of the HP printer often allows one job to print, but subsequent jobs are still blocked. This printer reset "mini-solution" does not work with the Epson printer. Again, even when this multi-page problem is happening, I can print the same file if it's sent as one slide per page.

Again, as I mentioned above, from the PC the exact same files can be printed perfectly, one or more slides per page, all the time without problem or delay. I can also print other files - emails or JPGs or word documents - from the Mac's without any problems. It just seems to be PDFs (sometimes) and multipage PDF printing all the time that causes a problem.

Grateful for any ideas as to what I can do to try to fix this.