Lathe errors have a great influence on the micro-roughness of machined surface. However, most established methods for lathe errors identification mainly rely on machining tests which are relatively complex and time resuming. These limitations lead to the development of a novel method which identifies lathe errors based on the turning topography with the help of the study of the effect of a single lathe error on the turning surface profile. For this purpose, five types of errors are divided into three categories for their identical effect on turning topography. Discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and least-squares straight line fitting approached to turning surface can respectively predict first two categories errors as well as obtained errors filtering process eventually to get final straightness error. The procedure as well as method verification for error identification are shown in the case study of three groups of simulations.
