I can't help with the vendor specific COM mode. I suggest adding more debug output to see why it is failing.
It has been a while since I last used the printer driver so I tested with Arduino IDE 1.8.13 and...
The example program Printer.ino detects the printer then it creates a pass through between the USB serial port (Serial) and the USB printer port. Open the Arduino Monitor (baud rate does not matter since it is native...
The USB device does not identify itself as a USB printer class device. The (class,subclass,protocol) is (255,0,255) which means vendor specific. A USB printer class device would have class = 7.
Consult the printer...