SuperATV’s New XR Optic Hard Coating Delivers Next-Level Scratch Resistance for UTV Windshields
How SuperATV Improved Its Polycarbonate Windshield Coating With a 4X Stronger XR Optic Formula
We’ve updated our XR Optic Hard Coating to make it better than ever. If you’re unaware, we’ve used our own proprietary hard coating, called XR Optic, to boost the scratch resistance on many of our polycarbonate windshields and doors. After years of research and development, we’ve updated our XR Optic formula to make it four times better than our original hard coating. Trust us, you won’t regret getting a SuperATV polycarbonate windshield with our new XR Optic Hard Coating.
Read on for a deep dive into our new hard coating, the science that proves it kicks ass, and why this brand-new coating is perfect for you.
Why Hard Coating Matters
You might be wondering why hard coating UTV windshields is so important. You don’t hear about hard coating on your car windshield, after all.
Here’s the thing: the most popular UTV windshield material is polycarbonate. That’s because polycarbonate is ridiculously tough—about 250 times stronger than glass. It’s perfect for off-road use where getting smacked by rocks and branches is part of the fun.
There’s a tradeoff, though.
- Polycarbonate is super strong, but scratches easily.
- Glass is very scratch resistant, but breaks easily.
Hard coating makes up for the shortcomings of polycarbonate by making it extremely scratch resistant too. That’s why we developed our new XR Optic Hard Coating—to make our polycarbonate windshields more scratch resistant than ever.
What Makes XR Optic So Good?
This is where things get a little bit technical.
There are two main types of hard coating:
- UV-cured
- Thermally cured
UV-cured hard coating hardens the liquid coating with UV light, while thermally cured hard coating hardens the coating by baking in an oven.
The Benefits of UV-Cured Hard Coating Like XR Optic
We UV-cure our hard coating in our proprietary UV coating line. UV curing our hard coating keeps our windshields formable, so we can bend them to fit any UTV out there. It’s also quick and gives us tons of control over the number of polycarbonate sheets we can coat in a day.
Our New XR Optic Formula Is 4X More Scratch Resistant
So it’s UV-cured to make it more affordable for you and easier to form to different UTV cages. But it’s also insanely scratch resistant. We’re not going to tell you what makes it so scratch resistant (we spent four years developing it after all), but we will tell you how we know it’s 4 times better than our original formula.
We know because we tested it.
The Taber Abrasion Test Proves How Good XR Optic Is
We followed the ASTM Taber Abrasion Test procedure to prove how good our new XR Optic formula is.
If you haven’t heard of a Taber Abrasion Test, here’s how we used it:
- We took a square piece of polycarbonate and measured the amount of light that passes through it. Glass, poly, and every other possible windshield material reflect some of the light that goes through them, so none of them are 100% transparent.
- Next, we ran that same piece of polycarbonate through the Taber Abrasion Test. This test turns the poly sample using abrasive wheels at a specific grit, pressure, and duration. The result is a circle of scratches on the sample.
- Finally, we measured the amount of light that passes through the scratched portion again. The difference in that measurement is converted to a percentage so we can compare the difference easily.
That percentage difference is the Taber number, and the smaller the number, the better the scratch resistance.
Let’s take a look at Taber numbers across the board. And remember, this number indicates the amount of haze, so the smaller the number, the better:
- Uncoated poly has a Taber number that’s more than 30. It’s off the charts.
- Our old XR Optic Hard Coating had a Taber number of 7, which is very good.
- Our new XR Optic Hard Coating has a Taber number of 1.8.
- Glass has a Taber number of 0.5.
That’s why we say our new XR Optic formula is four times better than the old (technically 3.9 times better, but who’s counting?). And glass, the king of scratch resistance, is 3.6 times better than our new formula. So our new XR Optic formula is closer to glass than it is to our old formula, while still coating poly that’s 250 times stronger. That’s called having your cake and eating it too.
Good in the Lab, Great on the Trail
Lab tests are great, but how does it do in the real world, on real machines, taking real hits?
We tried that out too.
Wipe Test
First, we did what riders have been doing to our windshields for years: we covered it in mud until we couldn’t see, then wiped it down with a washcloth. The result was a clean windshield with NO STREAKS despite all the grit.
Banging on Branches
Next, we did what every good rider does and ran through a bunch of low-hanging branches at speed. In the past, we’ve seen riding like this lead to at least a few big gouges in the poly. But with our new formula, we made it through streak-free.
Our New XR Optic Formula Is Available Now!
Our new XR Optic formula blows our old formula away. We’ve tested it in the lab and on the trail, and now it’s up to you to give it a try. All of our hard-coated windshields use our new XR Optic Hard Coating formula. The old formula is gone.
Get a SuperATV Polycarbonate windshield with their new XR Optic Hard Coating at UTV Source, get riding, and enjoy better abrasion resistance than you can get anywhere else.
