The silver salt photographic copying machine is adapted to duplicate a document image on a sheet of photosensitive material and is advantageous over conventional electrophotographic copying machines in that images of higher quality can be duplicated. In general, the silver salt photographic copying machine includes photosensitive material supply, exposure, processing, and drying sections A strip of photosensitive material is fed from a magazine in the photosensitive material supply to the exposure section where it is exposed to a document image, then to the processing section where it is wet processed for development, and finally to the drying section where it is dried, obtaining a duplicated picture. More particularly, the processing section includes a series of tanks for development, bleachfixation, and washing The exposed photosensitive material is passed through the tanks which are filled with respective processing solutions. Thereafter, the photosensitive material is dried in the drying section, completing image
In this type of photosensitive material processing apparatus, the drying section is usually maintained at temperatures of about 60.degree. C. to about 90.degree. C. The drying section has transport rollers with which the photosensitive material passes through the drying section in about 10 to about 60 seconds. Each transport roller used in the drying section is most often an assembly of axially spaced-apart cylindrical segments mounted on a shaft, which is referred to as a discontinuous roller, hereinafter. The discontinuous rollers permit the photosensitive material to move straight forward during transportation and prevent oblique travel, winding, twisting and wrinkling, thus minimizing jam. Most often, the transport rollers are formed of a relatively hard material such as vinyl chloride resin, phenol resin, and high molecular weight polyethylene. Unfortunately, it has been found that transport rollers of conventional hard material can cause flaws, scratches and marks on pictures especially in a low humidity environment or in winter.