One of the major obstacles in testing or evaluating precisely the thermal behavior of a machine tool is the difficulty in measuring the heat transfer coefficients on the surfaces by a conventional method. This paper presents a new approach based on the inverse method to identify the values of heat transfer coefficients by using temperature changes measured on the surfaces of a machine tool during a short period in its operating. In the present method, a machine tool structure is modeled by the finite element method and the characteristic curves of the temperature change at several points on machine tool surfaces are theoretically derived in the form that they contain the heat transfer coefficient as an unfixed heat source are approximated so that the theoretical characteristic curves of temperature change fit the measured ones as closely as possible.