Good day everyone:

I was wondering what everyone's take on Mosfet transistors happens to be.
As a general rule I typically locate those on low grade boards attached to aluminum heat sinks

in the event they are located on boards of grades low grade peripherial or higher would it be a good rule of thumb to leave mosfet transistors on those boards? Or would it be better to remove them at the same time married heat sinks are removed?

Thanks everyone

MOSFETS add value to the already Cu substrates in PCBs or boards. They're Cu bearing and most of the weight is the base metal. Half the time MOSFETS can be controllers and have dies inside like an IC would. That's how the newer EEPROMS and CMOS work in computers for today.

It depends on experience. What class of board to depopulate from for an upgrade , without taking the weight from MOSFETS that add maybe a positive value in metals or weight increase.

I usually just pull the heat sinks and spreaders and leave most MOSFETS on.

I might pull a few gold plated ones or IC MOSFETS( SIP packages) per say, to put in IC or connector ends.

It would be on grades of Low Tel and higher that would "make sense" to capitalize on removing components such as MOSFETS , cylindrical ALU and polymer capacitors, transformers and etcetera.

Thanks for some insight here. My general focus based on my location is low grade peripherial and higher. The boards I have processed up to this point (particularly my high grade peripherial boards) I have thankfully kept mosfets in place but I wasn't 100 percent sure if I needed to go back through and remove those as well.

I actually have quite a few low/mid grade boards that I am not going to send to boardsort because it wouldn't make economical sense for me to do but many of them have mosfets and other things on them like IC chips and naturally base metals. Not sure what everyone does with their mosfets which are removed from those grades of boards but I know they're of higher value than what can be made from just pitching a clean board.

I live less than an hour away from BS, so in my reasoning I do not need to remove multiple components for shipping purposes or to increase maximum input for output.

In your reasoning it might make more sense to remove said items on something from Low per and up to increase your payout because of your shipping methods.

Keep in mind, you can always remove ICs and gold pins from Low/Mid boards without downgrading them. Always remove the larger ICs from brown boards.

I use a cutting disk Dremel/variable rotary tool, to cleanly cut ICs perfect without touching any other components. It's very quick, clean, and precise.
As long as they don't have gold pins, which I extract with heat if so, you can cut evenly with the board, along the legs, without damaging the IC or PCB.

an FYI, also if you get in habit to remove and depopulate items for upgrade, you're going to have an abundance of unclassified stuff and things you now have to find where they go or put in base metal scrap.

If I remove items I make sure I can recycle them in another way, not to remove and throw away.

Remember, although this business is lucrative another side and fashion is to keep this toxic stuff out of our landfills and Earth.

Example of a higher end Mosfet. I threw it in IC. It has a silcon controller die as well gold plated through-out.