This study addresses the issue of safety of the splash guard of a computer numerical control (CNC) machine tool at the design stage. As an impact test for evaluating safety requirements such as strength under the safety regulation is an expensive and iterative task, it is necessary to develop a new method to minimize the task of the impact test for development of the machine tool. In this study, explicit finite element method was adopted for replacement of the impact test of the splash guard of a machine tool at the design stage. A finite element model was developed for implementing the impact test on an actual vertical CNC lathe and then produced the analysis including plastic strain and deformation to enable the safety of its splash guard to be determined. The analysis results demonstrated that the finite element method can be applied to safety evaluation for design of the splash guard of a CNC machine tool.