Radial immersion ratio is an important factor to determine the threshold in face milling and should be estimated in process for automatic force regulation. In this paper, presented is a method of on-line estimation of the radial immersion ratio using cutting force. When a tooth finishes sweeping, sudden drop of cutting forces occurs. This force drop is equal to the cutting force that acts on a single tooth at the swept angle of cut and can be obtained from cutting force signal in feed and cross-feed direction. The ratio of cutting forces in feed and cross-feed directions acting on the single tooth at the swept angle of cut is a function of the swept angle of cut and the ratio of radial to tangential cutting force. In the research, it is found that the ratio of radial to tangential cutting force is not affected by cutting conditions and axial rake angle. Therefore, the ratio of radial to tangential cutting force determined by just one preliminary experiment can be used regardless of the cutting conditions. Using the measured cutting force and predetermined ratio, the radial immersion ratio is estimated. Various experiments show that the radial immersion ratio and instantaneous ratio of the radial to tangential direction cutting force can be estimated very well by the proposed method.