Digital BW, The Print

This may seem off the topic, but please read on.

We have had similar grain problems with other scanners and printers 
and have discovered if you treat the image as color transparency all 
the way thru from the scan to the final print you get much better 
results as far as grain goes.  I speculate that it has to do with the 
way the scanner and printer do B&W.  Perhaps they only use the black 
print head and one third of the array for scanning?

Has any one had similar experience? We do not use special inks for 
B&W so I cannot speak for the color qualilies I am reading of here.  
Perhaps with the special tanks with more than one black ink loaded it 
can be controled to your liking