Reducing wear and tear on blade side Neopixel contacts

Dear saber builders and fans,

I have a Neopixel saber, and I started to notice that the pins on the hilt side are cutting down through the gold contacts to what appears to be the plastic substrate on the blade side PCB connector. I am concerned that over time the connecting pads will become worn out and run out of good places to connect. Is their a way to refresh these or place a new pad onto the blade side PCB connector? I was thinking of a more solid copper ring like system to simply place over the top of the existing blade side connector that the pins can't more easily dig through. I am guessing this would have to be done before the pad was completely gone of course.

You can run some solder on the rings. If you do this just make sure not to heat it up too much, or you may release the wires on the other side. If you do one ring at a time and let it cool, it should be fine.

Yes, I see what you mean. Solder is pretty soft, but it might add some protection. In addition to heat releasing the wires the pads themselves can lift away from the board. Good thing that the pins can self-adjust despite the solder thickness being uneven. I was hoping someone made a disk with thicker copper that matched the rings of the PCB that one could simply glue to the board. That would avoid the heat problem.

Adding solder will not cause the pads to lift off, I'm not sure why you think it would. Solder won't be that much softer than the HASL or ENIG on the PCB, but it will be much thicker, and is easy enough to refresh. This process is not a big deal, care just has to be taken to not put down excessive heat.

Thanks for the tip - I will try the soldering when the time comes and be extra careful since the Neopixel blades are pricey to replace. I've come across some pads lifting away from heat on other projects/PCBs, but that was likely due to a repair where I had to remove a component or wire and replace it with a new one on the existing pad. I probably used too much heat on those.