A novel method to prepare a hydrophilic coating is described in this paper whereby a hydrophilic acrylate resin was modified by grafting glycidyl methacrylate (GMA), which after curing under UV had excellent hydrophlicity and water tolerance. A study was conducted of the factors affecting the molecular weight of the acrylate copolymer and the coating properties. The results showed that the copolymer molecular weight was about 1300 and the polydispersity index (PDI) was 1.85 when the mole fraction of the initiator was 1.2% and the mole fraction of the chain transfer agent was 2%. The UV cured coating possessed favorable overall performance with a water contact angle of 14.2° and a weight loss ratio of 1.61% when the weight proportion of acrylic acid and hydroxypropyl acrylate (HPA) was 6∶4, the mole fraction of GMA was 15% and the mass fraction of the reactive diluent HPA was 30%.