Ball spinning often requires a continuous cooling of the deformation zone due to the large amount of deformation heat generated by the continuous point-by-point molding characteristics. According to the low forming temperature of magnesium alloy, this paper uses friction and deformation heat to replace the heating process of the thin-walled magnesium alloy tube in ball spinning process. The heat generation laws under different process parameters are calculated by finite element simulation. The results show that the temperature in the spinning deformation zone increases with the increase of rotating speed, thinning amount, feed ratio and friction coefficient. For these four parameters, the friction coefficient has little effect on the temperature increase. The amount of thinning is the most sensitive to the increase of temperature, the effect of mold speed on the increase of temperature is little, and the friction coefficient has the least influence on the temperature rise. Under high speed and larger amount of thinning, the temperature of the deformation zone can reach more than 220℃, which can meet the temperature requirement of hot forming of magnesium alloy. The results of non-contact temperature measurement in the deformation zone show that the simulation results are in good agreement with the measured results.