Recently, it has been demonstrated that a vibro-impact nonlinear energy sink (VI-NES) can be used to efficiently mitigate vibration of a Linear Oscillator (LO) under transient loading by irreversible energy transfer from LO to VI-NES. In this paper, the possibility of application of VI-NES to control the instability of chatter in turning as a passive control method is studied as a typical delay system. The dynamic responses of machine tool strongly coupled to VI-NES in turning are investigated theoretically by supposing that the tool just vibrates in the predominant direction and numerically with the help of Matlab dde23 algorithm. Three typical response regimes are obtained through numerical simulation under different parameters, that is, stable oscillation and complete suppression of regeneration chatter, relaxation oscillation and partial suppression, and unstable oscillation. Finally, a developed experimental setup is presented and the first test to acquire the stability lobe without VI-NES is accomplished.