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Thai Rubber Rollers |
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This is part of a series of pages on relics of Penang's rubber industrial
heritage. The others are:
Peter van der Lans did some hiking in Southern Thailand near the Malaysian border in January 2020 and sent me these pictures of three pairs he found. It was the dry season so there would have been little if any rubber tapping going on, but these are not the disused wrecks we turn up in Penang... The second and third pairs were near houses which accounts for the availability of electricity to power the electric motors.
This pair appear out of use. The characters are rusty and hard to read. The European characters seem to be a Thai name, the Chinese ones include those for 'Yuan Shun Fa' (mandarin Pinyin) and 'general agent'. Overall they seem to bear considerable similarity to machines found in Penang, in other words they represent a generic design.
Note the 'R' cast in the frames of this pair which are otherwise anonymous. I am reasonably sure these see regular use.
This final pair look 'ready for action' but could do with some oiling.
An internet search for 'Lee Hang Heng' produces few hits, one of which is for a company registered in Bangkok where most of the small engineering companies are run by Thais of Chinese origin. Yuehong says the Chinese characters represent 'Li Han Xing' (Mandarin Pinyin) and 'Manufacturer'
These are, no doubt, the tip of the iceberg, there are videos on Youtube, for example, showing such machines being demonstrated in use to tourists... |
