KUALA LUMPUR, June 20 (NNN-Bernama) — The hardship encountered when working as a young rubber tapper in the village spurred Noor Affande Abdul Rahman, 41, to create a gadget to ease the task of tapping rubber.
Starting from that point, Affande who holds a Civil Engineering degree from Universiti Technology Malaysia began his study and research in early 2014 to produce a rubber tapping device to facilitate the work of a rubber tapper.
“Rubber tapping is arduous, more so for our rubber tappers who are growing older and from there I decided to create a tapping machine to make rubber tapping less laborious compared to using the traditional tapping knife.
“In all my efforts in the past five years, I was assisted by my wife, Lizawati Jaafar, 36, who has a degree in Mechatronic Engineering from Universiti Perlis Malaysia,” he told Bernama when met during the Malaysia Tech Week in Bangsar recently.
Affande said despite taking a long time to realise the equipment, he was satisfied when he finally succeeded in inventing a semi-automatic device using a 12-volt battery and a rustproof tapping knife with three LED lights.
“Our gadget called e-notch has a battery which can operate for five hours and the tapping knife’s edge can last three years without being sharpened and most important of all, it does not injure the tree while inducing more latex.
“The tapping knife is completed with a motor which can rotate, thus saving tapping time to about seven to eight seconds per tree compared to about 15 to 20 seconds using the traditional method.
“The LED light is to assist tapping early in the morning when it is still dark,” he said.
He added that the product has been patented but it is still undergoing tests to further improve it before putting it in the market early next year.
“When it actually goes on sale, my biggest hope is that it would facilitate tapping rubber especially for older rubber tappers apart from improving their income,” he said.
He also expressed his appreciation to Risda Kedah which acted as a mentor to him as well as Teraju which gave him a commercial grant under the Bumiputera Entrepreneurs Startup Scheme.
NNN-BERNAMA