The wear analysis in Fig. 8 shows that the cutting inserts with 80 nm MgO had the lowest wear area i.e. 0.019 mm on machining stainless steel 316L. The result of the wear area analysis correlates with the result of Vickers hardness, which indicates that the cutting insert with the highest hardness value will have the highest wear resistant. According to the result of Vickers hardness shown in Fig. 5, the cutting inserts with the smallest MgO particle size has the highest Vickers hardness. Hence, this cutting insert shows the highest wear resistance. Furthermore, D'Erico et al., [6] also stated that the antiwear performance largely depends on the hardness of the cutting insert. Even though the property of fracture toughness is important for cutting inserts in the metal working application, the wear performance of the ZTA–MgO cutting inserts seem not to be affected by i compared to hardness. The effect of MgO composition on ZTA cutting insert wear performance is discussed elsewhere.