Hard turning has replaced conventional grinding in production processes in recent years as an emerging technique. Nowadays, coated carbide tools are replacing expensive CBN inserts in turning. Wear is a significant concern when turning with coated carbide; it immediately affects the acceptability of the machined surface, which causes machine downtime and loss due to wastage in machined parts. Online tool condition monitoring (TCM) is required to prevent such critical conditions. Hard turning differs from conventional turning in energy balance during metal cutting, resulting in greater thrust force; hence, the TCM model presented for conventional turning may not be suitable for hard turning. Hence, tool wear prediction for turning is projected based on thrust force using an artificial neural network (ANN). All of the tests were done using a design of experiments called full factorial design (FFD). The specimens were made of AISI 4140 steel that had been hardened to 47 HRC, and the inserts were made of coated carbide. The most impactful input features for wear, selected based on experimental outputs, were given to the neural network and trained. Tool wear is an estimated output from the training set that has been validated with satisfactory results for random conditions. The 5–10–1 network structure with the Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) learning algorithm, R2 values of 0.996602 and 0.969437 for the training and testing data, and mean square error values of 0.000133152 and 0.004443 for the training and testing data, respectively, gave the best results. The MEP values of 0.575407 and 2.977617 are very low (5%). The LM learning algorithm‐based ANN is good at predicting tool wear based on how well it predicts tool wear for both the testing set and the training set.