In machining titanium alloys, cutting tools generally wear out very rapidly because of the high cutting temperature resulted from the low thermal conductivity and density of the work material. In order to increase the tool life, it is necessary to suppress the cutting heat as much as possible by applying an abundant amount of coolant, but this will entail serious techno-environmental and biological problems. To study the performance and avoid these limitations, a PVD-coated insert was used to the dry face mill of (α +β) titanium alloys. As a result it was found that the inserts exhibit an excellent cutting performance at low cutting speeds and feed rates, and there is no significant difference in the dominant insert failure mode between the wet and dry cutting in discontinuous cutting.