Wave-soldering SMT Components

I've been having some issues lately with wave-soldering lately.  Component manufacturers are starting to discontinue some through-hole package parts, forcing many of us into surface mount.  You would think that everybody is using surface mount technology in this new millennium but there are some powerful reasons that many of us dwell in the electronic stone age.

Surface mount designs often end up being designed on double-sided boards.   Double-sided boards cost more than twice as much as single sided circuit boards and, in these Walmart days, cost is king.  If you're going to do a single-sided board and you're working in power electronics, some of your components are going to be through-hole parts no matter what you do.  Caps and power devices like MOSFETs require size and volume to either provide sufficient capacitance or to dissipate heat.  If you're going to mix surface mount devices with through-hole devices, you're either going to hand-place a lot of your through-hole components after placing your SMT parts, or you're going to glue your SMT parts down, insert all your through-hole stuff and pass the whole thing through the wave.  There are many considerations to passing SMT parts through a wave-soldering process.  I found an excellent summary of things you need to consider.

http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0170_wsp/index.html

Wave-soldering some surface mount parts is never going to work. You can't easily wave-solder QFPs or QFNs and you'll never wave-solder a BGA.  If you stick to SOIC packages, it's possible if you follow the suggestions in the link, particularly part orientation and thieving pads.  I've had some success on some seriously high volume (we're talking millions) designs.