Advancing Prototyping and Product Validation with PolyJet™ Technology at Jones Plastic

The Challenge 

Jones Plastic and Engineering, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, is a leading custom injection molding company with six facilities across the United States and Mexico. Serving industries including automotive, appliances, energy storage, and power sports, the company provides end-toend product development capabilities, from design and simulation to prototyping, molding, and assembly. For Jones Plastic, prototyping plays a critical role in helping customers move from early concepts to production-ready parts. Many of the company’s customers need to validate designs before committing to expensive tooling, but traditional prototyping methods do not always provide the level of realism, detail, or performance needed to support confident decisions.

The Solution

To close the gap between concept and production, Jones Plastic integrated Stratasys PolyJet™ technology into its in-house 3D prototyping lab, using the Stratasys J826™ printer to produce highly realistic, functional, full-color prototypes. The company built a digital workflow that connects 3D CAD, KeyShot rendering, 3MF files, and PolyJet 3D printing. This enables Jones Plastic to translate digital designs into physical parts that more closely represent the intended final product. With PolyJet, the team can produce prototypes with full color, texture, transparency, and fine detail, as well as combine rigid and soft-touch materials in a single print. The same workflow also supports more advanced prototyping needs. Jones Plastic uses Pantone color matching workflows with KeyShot and spectrophotometers, along with 3D scanning and reverse engineering for accurate reproduction. For functional prototyping, they use advanced materials like PolyJet ToughONE™.

Together, these capabilities allow Jones Plastic to use prototyping not as a standalone step, but as an integrated part of product validation.

Building Confidence Through Realistic Prototypes

One important use of PolyJet technology at Jones Plastic is creating realistic, show-ready parts that help customers better visualize their final products. This is especially valuable when a rendering alone is not enough to support a decision.

In one case, a customer needed to choose between multiple color options. Rather than relying only on renderings, Jones Plastic produced a physical prototype using Pantone 644C. The team also created a textured plaque using KeyShot and PolyJet technology, then finetuned color accuracy with a spectrophotometer. 

The result was a successful color match that demonstrated the value of physical prototypes in the customer decision-making process. By giving the customer a tangible, color-accurate representation of the product, Jones Plastic enabled faster, more confident feedback.

Expanding From Visual Models to Functional Validation 

Jones Plastic also uses PolyJet technology to support functional prototyping. While standard PolyJet materials such as Vero® and Digital ABS™ are valuable for many applications, some prototypes require additional durability and flexibility for testing. To address those needs, Jones Plastic adopted PolyJet ToughONE, a more flexible and impact-resistant material.

In a sporting goods application, a customer needed a functional prototype of a frame-based product. Initial prints using Vero and Digital ABS did not meet the performance requirements for the application. By using PolyJet ToughONE, Jones Plastic was able to produce the functional prototype in-house, then paint the final prototype to match the customer’s specifications. This allowed the company to eliminate the need for outsourced functional prototypes, reduce development time and cost, and support real-world testing earlier in the design cycle.