I recovered a load of stuff using a hot air gun, and scraping the components off with a knife, but the trouble is they tend to get soldered to each other. It's nice and easy though. I've seen video demo's of someone heating the board up then banging it edge down, all the parts fall off. Hasn't worked for me they've been glued I think. Best tool by far for individual devices is the soldering iron with a bit that has a long straight edge (Hakko shape K) because it can melt several pins at one time. SOT-23 I unsolder the pin on it's own first, lifting the device with the tip of a knife, then unsolder the other 2 pins together, using the knife tip to drag it away. When I've tried it the other way round, ie the 2 pins first, the other one tends to break
. The technique I've found works for smd electrolytics and inductors is to slowly pre-heat the board with the heat gun, then unsolder it with the iron, else the heat from the iron just won't penetrate, and the heat gun on it's own is too much brute force. The 4066 in the picture I removed by heating with the heat gun and lifting it with the knife tip.
But the biggest problem I have is storage - smd cases are expensive! I started a thread about it a while ago. I seriously considered glassene bags as someone suggested, but I'm having doubts. So the ones I removed with the heat gun are still mixed up in their little make-up pot, all the others are still attached to their boards. Go hunting through the boards often enough you end up with an idea where to find what anyway. I want to try making multi-hole containers by drilling wide shallow holes in a piece of wood, but I'd need lids for them and don't know what to use.