We pre baked some boards and other components before assembly and reflow. That eliminated cracked multilayer SMD capacitors, tombstoning of two lead components and losing end caps. That was in N Central Florida which has plenty of humidity problems. The so called HVAC 'engineers' were clueless about how to control the humidity, so we had to resort to baking. LSI SMD ICs were backed and heat sealed into antistatic bags with moisture adsorbing packets.
Sure, baking humidity sensitive parts is common before pick-n-place. It's a bit less common when hand (de)soldering, though. ;-)
We had a high failure rate on hand soldered FIR chips, before we started baking them. The bottom of the packaging was the thinnest, and it would bow out as it released steam during hand soldering. No one in EE or ME believed me, until I finally got them to try it for themselves.
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