I’ve had this one for a little over 2 years, but I suspect it wouldn’t last the average person 2 months before it outright fails and they just throw it away.
Why? Well, electronics don’t exactly like smoke of any form, whether it be nicotine, weed, wood, paper, etc. But that’s exactly what these lighters do, literally light things on fire, which of course generates smoke and dirties the electrodes, up until the point they start shorting out, if not other issues first.
I happen to be an electronics technician that knows how to safely disassemble, service and clean this thing occasionally, but its highly suggested that nobody ever try to service them, as they generate thousands of volts for the electric arc, which absolutely will burn the piss out of your fingers, if not worse.
I’m actually glad to have it, it was a cheap late Christmas gift from my mom back in January 2024, but I figure basically 99% of average consumers would end up having issues with it and throwing it away within ~2 months or less.
Sigh, e-waste…
Kapton tape is a good high Voltage insulator that is also cheap and available.
And I have 3 rolls of the stuff, 1cm wide, partly used to fix it. Honestly I’ve used more heatshrink (ThermalFit) and solder than Kapton tape, but yeah…
Yeah, but when it comes to voltage breakdown, kapton is the way to go as long as it’s not part of a wearable fabric of some sort that needs to have tension and shear.
I found that micro heatshrink/thermalfit works best over the solder splices for the replaced electrodes. I made sure to stagger the splices as well, to avoid any further internal arcing.