Heavy flint optical glass(SF57HHT) is new material that has extremely high transmittance. Due to brittleness and high hardness, optical glass is one of the most difficult to materials for ultra-precision turning. According to the hypothesis of ductile machining, all materials, regardless of their hardness and brittleness, will undergo transition from brittle to ductile machining region below critical undefromed chip thickness. In this study, cutting test was carried out to evaluate cutting performance of heavy flint glass using ultra-precision machine with single crystal diamond bite. The machined workpiece surface topography, tool wear and surface roughness were examined using AFM and SEM. The experimental results indicate that the machining mode become the brittle mode to ductile mode, when the maximum undeformed chip thinkness is large than critical value. Tool wear mainly occurs on the flank face and its wear mechanism is dominated by abrasion. This study demonstrates the feasibility of SF57HHT by diamond turning.