Only two things are not allowed. Batteries, and radioactive materials.
Remove batteries, at best a bad battery makes a fire. At worst they can make a bomb. Remember that these boards aren’t sitting in a protected case on or under your desk. They are being shoved around in boxes and trailers. Moved and st times dropped from airplanes: it’s 9 meters from the bay door to the ground of a 370. I promise you they care even less about a shipping pallet than your luggage.
One bad thump and a stray battery becomes a nightmare.
Radioactive? More common than you think. Smoke detector? “Jedi” thermometer? That glow in the dark gps clock from 1999?
The good news is they are always marked as being such. Take it to Lowe’s or Ace or Home Depot. Etc. Any company that sells radioactive materials must accept them back.
You may have to fight a bit on some things (“we didn’t sell that”) but any and all. It’s the law.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20980&start=10Quote:
Remove heatsinks. Remove shields. And you can safely pull (up and off) mega canister capacitors.
Everything else is generally not a good idea.
Removing a transformer from an otherwise high telco board? Takes precision and skill to not make a low peripheral (or worse) board with the slightest mistake.
Yes, there are rack relay twisted pair boards that could go from low telco to high by removing the connector gang. But pulling that off is more than cutting or snapping.
I do the former often enough.
I won’t try the latter.