Patent US 4,038,533

An industrial control processor is employed in a numerical control system to operate the servo mechanisms on a machine tool in response to a part program stored on a tape. The industrial control processor includes unique hardware and software features which also allow it to operate as a programmable controller to control the discrete digital devices associated with the machine tool. The industrial control processor is programmed with a conventional computer type instruction set to perform numerical control functions and is programmed with a programmable controller type instruction set to perform the machine dependent logic functions. The resulting system maintains the state-of-the-art capabilities of a computer numerical control (CNC) and adds to it the flexibility and programming ease of a programmable controller.