During the turning of the workpiece, cutting heat causes thermal deformation of the cutting tool which influences the surface characteristics of the machined part. This paper presents a study of thermal deformation of the cutting tool. For this purpose, cutting tool is modeled based of Pro/Engineering and the thermal deformation is simulated by means of the finite element method. The thermal effect on the surface roughness profile is simulated by using surface-shaping system. It has been shown that the results of simulation are similar to those of experiment.