I have an older Universal Laser Systems VL-300 laser cutter. It works great with Coreldraw but I don't want to buy it just for the laser and have to learn another program. I know Inkscape pretty well and would like to stay with it. The problem I am having is getting it to send out a vector line, so that the lasers print driver picks it up and vector cuts it instead of rastering the line. Rastered lines do not force the laser to full power to cut thru the material. Instead it Rasters it and just tries to poke holes in the material. The laser software says to have the vector (cut lines) set to the color red and to hairline width (.001 inch). I also have the Backend under print - rendering with the Vector selection selected. But just get rastered lines no cut lines.

Does anyone know how to make Inkscape work with a ULS laser and their print drivers?

Many Thanks!

Scott

Seems the export vectors extension is broken: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/extensions/-/issues/417

With Epilog lasers, we save a copy as PDF and "print" from Adobe reader. This works very well.

Thanks for that tip. I was able to get it to work that way. Its a bit of a pain but doable. The part I don't like is having to make sure all the print settings are right all the time so neither changes it to things like black and white or adds a border and moves the cut lines down a 1/4 of a inch and now I am cutting air.

I would still like to make Inkscape work directly but I just don't even know where to start or if it is a internal coding thing.

Scott

It's a quite complicated internal coding thing.

I usually use Adobe Reader in tabbed mode, to retain the last printer settings when opening a new document in a tab or tweaking the current artwork.

So up until last weekend I never had a problem printing from Inkscape to my Epilog Dashboard.  Suddenly last weekend it started printing to my dashboard as a bitmap.  If I load a file that I created a month ago in Inkscape and print then it works fine.  Any idea how to make it work on files I create now?  This is extremely frustrating.  I tried the save as pdf and print from Adobe Reader but it isn't working right for me.  Any ideas?

I'd be looking for transparency anywhere in the document. Epilogs treat all strokes with transparency as raster engrave.

Feel free to share an example file.

I couldn't get photos to upload from my phone.  Anyway though I did notice just now that files that I had made previous to this last weekend, they will upload and separate into vectors fine, however like the OP said they are printing a 1/4" low too.  This is so frustrating.  I've had my Epilog for a year and no issues whatsoever and then all of a sudden now I'm dealing with all of this.  I have Corel but I have no clue how to use it and I really don't have the time or energy for it.  I wish Inkscape would continue working right like it had for the last year.

Also there is no transparency as far as I can tell in the file.

An example Inkscape SVG is the best way to asses.

Could be layer transparency, 1% blur or any other filter...  its easy to roll the mouse wheel over a slider or spinbox and clobber the file.

We always use PDF from Inkscape, Illustrator, Affinity. (Corel users are lucky that Epilog and Corel have been working together since the beginning.)

We save a copy as pdf, with the checkbox to convert text to paths on export. In Adobe, we always check the document dimensions and tick the actual size button, then in the Epilog driver, put the same dimensions and the the other settings.

All of that is a huge pain though.  What I don't understand is how it worked perfect for a year and now all of a sudden it works like complete crap.  Makes no sense.

All I can say for certain is that accidental transparency is the most common reason .001" lines fail to cut. Like 98%... the other 2% are an accidental blur on a layer, which may not happen anymore, since the tools were removed from the layers panel, or a bad swatch.

Yeah but the thing is it's not just one file.  It's any file I make.  I even uninstalled Inkscape and reinstalled different versions.