I've been working on a refurbishing an AL-99 power feed for a used mill I bought a couple months ago. Somebody'd managed to let the magic blue smoke out of the motor armature. The folks at Bestline Products (
www.bestlinepro.com) have been very supportive and helpful. They're the current importer of Align products.
Helpful and supportive - BUT - mine appears to be from the way-back-when original production run, and the manufacturer redesigned some vital parts, so I'm SOL in that respect.
I've deigned a fix, based on a 24 volt DC drill motor. Part of the conversion includes replacing the original 110 volt circuit breaker with a standard fuse. My goal has been to keep as many of the original parts and functions as possible. The breaker was mounted in a counterbored ~38" thru hole, which I had to enlarge and thread to fit the fuse holder. And there isn't enough room to use the retaining nut that came with the holder.
It turns out that the thread on the fuse holder is a real oddball - 13mm x 1mm pitch. I decided I had to make my own tap. I don't have a large stock of stock right now, but did have some steel rod (mystery metal) that was .547" diameter. Turned it down to 13mm, added a generous thread relief groove, then added a gentle taper to the end, using a file. Neither the turned section nor the threads were very pretty, due to the nature of the steel (cat's tongue syndrome), but the threads looked acceptable.
Went to the mill, and using a hexagonal C5 collet block to hold the part, added 6 relief grooves, leaving about 1/16" thread sections between them. After a bit of deburring and a quick pass with a Dremel cutoff wheel to sharpen, I did a test cut on a piece of polycarbonate. Again, not very pretty, but the fuse holder threaded in and the threads held when I gently tightened it.
I then hit the tap with a propane torch, gave it a dunk in water, and used the Dremel to give it a final sharpening.
The first picture shows the resulting threads in the AL-99 body:
The second shows the fuse holder screwed into the AL-99. I was lucky here, as the side contact was facing up when the fuse holder was tightened, so I didn't have to fool with additional spacers:
The third photo shows the tap (post heat treatment), as well as the initial test fit in the polycarbonate:
