The cutting characteristics of hardened steel(AISI 52100) by PCBN tools is investigated with respect to cutting force, workpiece surface roughness and tool flank wear by the vision system. Hard Owning is carried out with various cutting conditions; spindle rotational speed, depth of cut and feed rate. Backpropagation neural networks(BPNs) are used for detection of tool wear. The input vectors of neural network comprise of spindle rotational speed, feed rates, vision flank wear, and thrust force signals. The output is the tool wear state which is either usable or failure. The detection of the abnormal states using BPNs achieves $96.8\%$ reliability even when the spindle rotational speed and feedrate are changed.