The purposes of using cutting fluid during cutting have been cooling, lubricating, chip washing, and anti-corroding. However, the present manufacturing industry restricts the use of cutting fluid because cutting fluid contains poisonous substances which are harmful to the human body. Therefore dry cutting becomes an unavoidable assignment and a lot of researches have studied cutting methods without using cutting fluid. Because dry turning is a continuous work, tools life is reduced by continuous heat generation and surface gets rough due to reduced lubrication, so it is important to consider these situations. In this paper, the way of selecting the optimal machining condition by the minimum number of experiments and the effectiveness of using compressed air in high hardness materials through Taguchi method have been found. Dry cutting using compressed air showed better cutting characteristics than normal dry cutting with respect to by cutting force, tool wear, and surface roughness. Also, the optimal machining condition f3r dry cutting using compressed air could be selected through Taguchi method.