What if I get ranked perks for crafting but then drop them....

[Fedsmoker]

or respec - do I lose access to whatever armor/guns/mods I crafted previously to the respec? Would appreciate some details and insight into how these mechanics are handled here. In other MMOs I am used to the item being greyed out and non equip-able anymore in a similar type of situation (although some items had loopholes to them)

[Eriskumma]

You can unequip and equip perk cards freely, you don't lose them or mods/gear you've made using them. Also you don't lose anything if you respec. You should anyway equip the crafting perks only when you are crafting and switch back to combat etc perks after you're done.
EDIT. Oh, you can also freely use any weapon without dedicated perks, they just do less damage.

[lucg]

You keep those perk cards and you switch perk cards in your deck as you need them.

The goal is to have an optimized deck for combat and having the secondary perk cards to help you for crafting/repairing/selling/dialogues/situations, etc ...

[insert food here]

Perks cards simply give buffs and benefits to items or abilities such as crafting. You need to manage what cards you have equipped in your deck for whatever you are doing to get the most benefit.

For example you may need certain perks for crafting certain mods. Add in the cards you need to do it, then remove them and put back in perks for combat or other effects that are more useful. Only swap back in the crafting perks when you need them again.

When you remove a perk card at whatever rank you still own it to use again unless you scrap it with F. Then it is gone until you get it again.

[NIkto Barada]

it gets better! all the mods you learn stay learnt and weapons with em can be traded unless theyre using atom shop skins.