In modern manufacturing system, tool condition is one of the important factors which affects the machining under various cutting conditions, and the tool has to be replaced when it was worn out. The objective of this work is to estimate the effect of various input cutting parameters on tool life in boring of steel (AISI 1040) by finding the roughness on machined surface and amplitude of workpiece vibration. The input parameters used are cutting speed, feed rate and tool nose radius. According to design of experiments, 18 experiments were conducted on computer numerical control lathe by changing cutting parameters. Most of the researchers have used accelerometers to measure vibration of cutting tool in machining process. In this work, a new attempt was made with laser Doppler vibrometer for online data acquisition of workpiece vibration, and a high-speed fast Fourier transform analyzer was used to process the acousto-optic emission signals obtained from laser Doppler vibrometer. It was found that it is easy to measure vibration of workpiece in less time with laser Doppler vibrometer. The data were analyzed with Taguchi and analysis of variance for a significant parameter. Contribution of individual cutting parameters on surface roughness and amplitude of workpiece vibration is calculated with the analysis of variance.