You can Dismantle equipment to gain crafting materials. Dismantling items also gains you crafting experience, but not much. Right-click on a piece of equipment in your inventory and select Dismantle from the floating menu. Click Auto until the equipment you wish to analyze is on the right side. You will also need a hammer of the correct level. This will dismantle the equipment (which is destroyed) and replace it with crafting materials, most likely some type of element shard.