A major problem in automation of turning operations is the difficulty in obtaining a sufficient and reliable chip control. Therefore it becomes desirable to find a method which can detect the chip form. Newly born chips in usual metal cutting radiate infrared rays. When such chips run out of cutting point quickly, the radiated energy from the zone around the tool is low compared with that of the case when long tangled chips are staying around the tool. The difference in chip pattern can be detected from the output of pyrometer. But, strictly speaking, only the output of pyrometer does not identify the chip form because that is the removal of chip. Therefore, in this paper, a method of the identification of chip form using output of pyrometer and fuzzy inference is developed.