The paper describes a new variable-attractive-force impact damper and its application to eliminate chatter vibrations in cutting process. The effectiveness of plain impact damper is somewhat limited due to non-linearity such as the damping effect depend upon vibration amplitude. For improving the effectiveness, the variable-attractive-force impact damper system is proposed and developed. The system is mainly composed of an electromagnet with a Hall-effect sensor, a vibration sensor, and feedback control amplifiers. This system is applied to eliminate chatter vibrations in face milling process for very-weak-workpieces. The cutting tests revealed that the system is very effective and versatile for stopping chatter vibrations.