Miniaturized machine tools have been established as a promising technology for machining the miniature components in wider range of materials. Spindle of a miniaturized machine tool needs to provide extremely high rotational speed, while maintaining the accuracy. In this work, a capacitive sensor-based measurement technique is followed for assessing radial errors of a miniaturized machine tool spindle. Accuracy of spindle error measurement is affected by inherent error sources such as sensor offset, thermal drift of spindle, centering error, and form error of the target surface installed in the spindle. In the present work, a model-based curve-fitting method is proposed for accurate interpretation and analysis of spindle error measurement data in time domain. Experimental results of the proposed method are presented and compared with the commonly followed discrete Fourier transform-based frequency domain-filtering method. Proposed method provides higher resolution for the estimation of fundamental frequency of spindle error data. Synchronous and asynchronous radial error values are evaluated in accordance with ANSI/ASME B89.3.4M [9] standard at various spindle speeds and number of spindle revolutions. It is found that the spindle speed and number of spindle revolutions does not have much influence on synchronous radial error of the spindle. On the other hand, asynchronous radial error motion exhibits a significant speed-dependant behavior with respect to the number of spindle revolutions. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011.