I have the AL5D arm and have finally written a service to drive it using Microsoft Robotics Dev. Studio (MRDS). In the process, I have simplified both the forward and inverse kinematics calculations and will post these shortly to share with those who may be interested (anyone else working with MRDS?). One thing that is throwing me off a bit – though I can work around it – is that the servo for the elbow joint turns in a different direction than the rest of the joints. In other words, when one sends a pulse of 0.9 msec to a servo, one would expect the servo to go to -45 deg (as per the SSC-32 user guide). This is certainly true of all servos except the one for the elbow. When the latter gets a 0.9 msec pulse, it goes to +45 deg instead. I cannot for the life of me figure out why this servo is going in the opposite direction. I know the arm itself is assembled properly because it works flawlessly with both SSC Terminal and RIOS. So right now, I have to compensate by brute force the unexpected rotational behavior of this servo. Does anyone have any idea what might be going on? Thanks.
Hi and welcome!
Is the elbow servo a different brand like the other? Instead of referring to +/- deg of rotation, what about CCW and CW. If this servo is the same brand and rotate in different direction (CW vs CCW) I’m puzzled… 
EDIT: I assume you’ve tested all servos through the exact same signal for eliminating code error or other stuff.
Any build pictures? RIOS allows you to reverse any servo so it’s not a real good measure of what could be wrong. You should connect the SSC-32 to LynxTerm and type in specific commands to test servo response. In the build do you have all servo horns facing the same direction? 
When looking at the output shaft of any Hitec servo 1500uS pulses will center it. Pulses larger than 1500 will move it in the CW direction and values lower than 1500 will move it in the CCW direction.
Actually, my bad! I built the arm over a year ago, so I just relied on my recollection of how the servos were connected, and assumed that they were all done the same way. Having examined more closely last night at how the elbow joint was put together, I realized that the rotating (axle) end of the that servo was connected to the preceding link (forearm), while the body of the servo to the next link (arm). So when that servo is pulsed to turn in a CCW direction, since the axle is screwed to the forearm link which does not move, this would cause the servo body, which is the part that is free to move and connected to the arm link, to move in a corresponding CW direction. Duh!!
Thanks to everyone for your comments.
Drew