Hi Windell,

Thanks for the reply! I’m sorry I didn’t describe the problem better. I’ve read the article on Map Projection and understand about stretching designs for printing on eggs.

It’s when it’s printing on a sphere that’s the problem. I’ve been printing on spheres successfully. The design needed no squishing in Inkscape and printed proportionally on the sphere whether it was an ornament or ping pong ball.

But for some reason, sometimes a design that printed properly before comes out elongated.

For example, I printed an identical design on three identical ornaments. The designs on two of the ornaments are elongated. The design on the third one is perfect. (and for the record, these are round ornaments.)

Same with the ping pong balls. I printed a circular design on one and it came out perfect. The next time I tried it, it was elongated.

However, I didn’t print all of these things in a row. I printed an ornament, switched to a ping pong ball, switched back again, and so forth. That’s why I was thinking one of the manual settings might be to blame for my inconsistent results.

I guess I’m wondering whether there’s a particular setting on the machine – pen arm height, motor height, pen holder height, etc. – which might cause an occasional elongation?

Thanks for your patience, Windell. I did more tests as you suggested and I think I’ve found the culprit. The screw that adjusts the height of the distal arm wasn’t as tight as it could be. It was a bit deceiving because while the screw felt tight, gently twisting the arm showed that it would rotate out of alignment very easily.

After tightening the screw further and running some more tests, it’s much improved. Either that or I did something else during my tests that helped. Regardless I seem to be up and printing again until the next user error, haha.

Thanks again for your help. I love this machine :)