Getting lost in the wilds: Vitap CNC integration, Polyboard training and more

We were recently asked to give a 3 day Polyboard training and CNC set up session to the company Grosjean Concept Bois, in the east of France in the Haut Doubs region on the French Swiss border. A beautiful and wild area full of forests and rivers.

The scenery was spectacular…I arrived at the nearest hotel, built plumb between 2 mountains water sources: one called La Source Bleue (the blue source) where blue water pours directly out of the mountain side; and the other La Source Noire (the black source) where the water is not at all black but just crystal clear.

To show that I was really lost in the depths of France, Google couldn’t find it and there was no mobile nor internet accessibility. So I was really lost in the wilds, but in a great hotel with friendly people and real locally made and cooked french food that was just exquisite.

Grosjean Concept Bois is situated in a little village at a 10 minute drive from the hotel. Lost in all that wild nature it was really surprising to fall upon a modern thriving and well organised workshop with all the latest high tech CNC machinery.

Grosjean Concept Bois is run by Pierre-Olivier Grosjean and his wife. They are backed up by a young dynamic team of 10 amazing craftsmen who are specialised in cabinetry and stair building.

Here’s what Pierre-Olivier had to say about Grosjean Concept Bois:

Our company was founded by my father in 1991. He started a small one man business specialising in custom oak kitchens and with work coming in fast he quickly expanded his team by taking in an apprentice.

I was at high school in the Ecole de Mouchard a renowned school for the woodworking industry in the Jura. I finished school in 2003.

After leaving high school, I worked for a couple of years in various other companies and in 2005 I became a partner with my father and we created the actual company Grosjean Concept Bois.

In the beginning my father specialised in solid wood kitchens. Little by little we also started making shop fittings. We managed to sign a contract making fittings for the Credit Agricole, nationwide branches of a major French bank. As well as furniture and fittings we also continued to make occasionally doors and windows.

In 2008 we signed a contract to make joinery for the historical buildings of France. Our company was engaged to make around 600 doors and windows for the renovation of 3 classified castles.

As well as general joinery my father had always made a couple of stair cases each year. In 2005 to 2010 we started making a few more stairs and in 2012 we signed a contract with a builder to make the stairs for his houses. In 2014 we bought our first Pouwels CNC specifically to build stairs. Stairs are very time consuming so our investment allowed us to reduce our prices and helped us enormously to get into the stair market.

Today we are a team of 12 people.

Our story with Polyboard dates back to my father in 1998.

After my father started the company he quickly got tired of drawing and tediously making up cutting lists by hand. Looking for a way to automate his projects he found Polyboard.

We bought our first Polyboard in 1998 and quickly found that it was perfectly suited to the work we do and we just haven’t looked back since.

To further automate the production of cabinets we recently acquired a Vitap K2 CNC router. We can now send the Polyboard post processor files directly to the Vitap machine to automatically drill and cut our Polyboard panels.

The whole system works very well and we are hoping that we will save a lot of time now that everything is well organised and running efficiently.

For more information please visit our website: Grosjean CONCEPT BOIS

We would like to thank Pierre-Olivier and the team for taking the time to discuss their background and experiences with Polyboard.

The Polyboard training and set up with the Vitap CNC included:

• Completing and reorganising the existing Polyboard library set up: new hardware, edging preferences; carcass construction elements etc.
• Training 2 new members of the team in Polyboard, and extended training in use of the Quick Design libraries.
• Setting up Polyboard’s Vitap post processor to adapt Polyboard’s output to their particular Vitap/TpaCAD settings.
• Testing and fine tuning the post processor settings so all machining details defined within a design project are automatically output to the CNC.

More information

Please contact us if you would like to discuss adding Polyboard to your CNC manufacturing process. We have more details here on how Polyboard integrates with virtually any CNC.

We can also send you sample TpaCAD files from Polyboard’s post processor to test with your Vitap.