Plasma arc cutting is a fusion cutting process in which a gas-constricted arc is employed to produce a high-temperature, high-velocity plasma jet on the workpiece. This process provides some advantages such as increased cutting velocity, excellent working accuracy and the ability to cut special materials (widely used stainless steels and Al-alloys, for example), when compared with iconventional oxyfuel gas cutting. From the view point of price and reliability of the power source, plasma arc cutting has also some distinct advantages over laser beam cutting. High-speed machines with NC or CNC systems are needed for the plasma arc or laser beam cutting process, while for oxyfuel gas cutting, low-speed machines with copying templates or optical-shape tracking sensors can be applied. The low price and high flexibility of the microprocessor arc contributing more and more the application of CNC system in the plasma arc cutting process, as in other manufacturing fields. From these points of view, a microprocessor-based plasma arc cutting system was developed by using a reference-pulse system, and its performance was tested. The interpolating routines were programmed in the assembly language for saving the memory volume and improving the compouting speed, which has an intimate relationship with the available cutting velocity.