In all manufacturing processes, surface quality has a great significance beside dimensional and geometrical tolerances of the products. Performance and strength of machine parts are highly affected by the surface quality. In this research, the effect of the rake angle on surface quality for AISI 1040 steel in turning operations was investigated. For this purpose, eight different rake angles varying from negative to positive and five different cutting speeds were used in the experiments. Depth of cut and feed rate were kept constant throughout the experiments. The results showed that negative rake angle resulted in poor surface quality. Improvement in surface quality continued when the rake angle increasing in positive direction up to a certain limit (10°) after which no further improvement was determined. Moreover, the analysis of variance was used based on factorial design of experiment to evaluate effectiveness of the rake angle and cutting speed in the medium machining. Statistical analysis results showed that the rake angle is the dominant parameter associated with the surface roughness.