ESAB recommended filler metals and suggested preheat group, by ASTM steel grade

Which filler metals ESAB recommends for welding a given ASTM steel grade, and which of its four preheat groups (A-D) that grade falls in. Answers 'what ESAB rod do I use to weld ASTM A106 Grade C pipe'. WHICH WELDING PROCESSES THESE PAGES COVER: all six that the source covers, as of 2026-09-16. ESAB's table runs across FACING pages. The left page carries the preheat group, stick (SMAW) and gas-shielded wire/rod (GMAW/GTAW); the right page recommends fillers for the same grade rows under submerged arc (SAW), gas-shielded flux-cored (FCAW), self-shielded flux-cored (FCAW) and metal-cored (MCAW). 699 of the 794 records now answer at least one of those four. The other 95 give the left page only, for two different reasons, and neither is an omission that can be quietly filled in: 57 of them sit in 10 ASTM blocks (A269, A487, A508, A333, A334, A420, A989, A536, A494, A589) where one row of the block is blank on the right and nothing in the PDF says WHICH end it is blank at, so every row in the block could be shifted by one; the remaining 38 are rows where ESAB prints no right-hand recommendation at all. A row we cannot place is left empty rather than guessed, because guessing would invent a welding recommendation for a named steel. HOW THE ROW ALIGNMENT WAS PROVED, since the right page carries no ASTM or grade column and a row's only identity is its position: every block is anchored in a second, column-major reading of the same PDF and its four left-hand columns consumed out of that reading character for character, then each row placed by the span of the surviving blank lines rather than by packing lines from the top. That is checked against the source itself, not assumed -- of the 704 placed rows, 347 name an alloy on BOTH pages (308L, B3, 2209, NiCrMo-3), and in all 347 the two pages agree; shifting the join by one row inside the same block drops that agreement to 36%. The hand check the brief asked for passes: A47 and A48 both read 'OK NiFeCI-A/NiFeCI-A0' on the left and both land on 'NC 55' under gas-shielded flux-cored with the other three processes blank. WHAT THE QUOTE UNDER THOSE FOUR FIELDS CAN AND CANNOT SHOW, because it is easy to expect more of it than it can give: the right-hand page prints no ASTM or grade column, so the passage quoted for a SAW, flux-cored or metal-cored value is that page's row exactly as printed, and it cannot name the steel it belongs to. Its column headings sit roughly 170 printed lines above the data, so no contiguous passage carries a heading and a value together either. 1,464 of those 1,697 row quotes name at least one product and are distinctive; the remaining 233 are nothing but bare group numbers ('Group 1 Group1 Group 1'), a string that occurs up to 546 times in this section and states nothing on its own. So for these four fields the quote shows that the page prints this value in this row, and which steel the row belongs to rests on the alignment above rather than on the quote. That alignment was re-checked independently on 2026-10-01, from the published records alone rather than from the extraction that wrote them: of 327 rows naming an alloy on both pages, 297 agree outright, and all 30 apparent exceptions are ESAB's two naming systems for one metallurgy ('7018-Mo' against '7000-A1', '308' against '308L', '8018-C1' against '8-Ni2') -- against 28% agreement if the join is shifted one row down, 24% one row up, and 12% two. Every record comes from one section of one manufacturer's databook, headed on the page itself as 'Recommended ESAB Filler Metals' -- so this is that vendor's advice, not a vendor-neutral cross-reference, and the name says so. Two things follow from that. First, the filler values are ESAB product names (Atom Arc 7018, Spoolarc 120, OK 61.81) and ESAB group codes, and a group code is defined separately for each welding process: 'Group 1' for stick means SW 6010 / SW 10P / SW 6011 / SW 6013 / SW 7014, while 'Group 1' for MIG means Spoolarc 29S / 82 / 86 / 87HP / Aristorod 12.50. Same label, different products; the databook expands both in its own legend at printed page 7-2, and each record now carries the expansion for the group its own row names, quoted from under that legend's process heading. Under gas-shielded flux-cored (Dual Shield), which is the one process whose legend runs to four groups, the expansion is published one field per group rather than as a single list: 52 rows name more than one group, and 15 of those name a set the legend does not print side by side ('Group 1, Group 2, Group 4'), so any single value for them would have to be either a string ESAB never printed or a span that swallows a group ESAB did not recommend for that steel. One field per group avoids both — every value is one printed legend line, and a row simply fills the fields for the groups it names. Second, the preheat value is a letter and not a temperature: A-D index a preheat-temperature-by-steel-thickness table at the head of the section. That table is now carried too, so a record states the temperatures its letter points to rather than only the letter -- but they remain what the source calls 'suggested ranges', adding 'Check your welding procedure for a more specific preheat temperature.' The two temperature fields have the same kind of limit as the four process fields above, and it is worth stating because the numbers look more self-evident than they are: the passage quoted under them is the WHOLE preheat table, all four columns, and nothing inside it says which column belongs to this steel. That comes from the preheat letter, which this record also publishes with the row that prints it, so the check is two steps and both are on the page: read the letter off the row, then read down that column of the table. Every one of the 738 temperature values was re-checked against the printed table by letter on 2026-10-01 and all 738 agree. A vendor-neutral version of this cross-reference does exist but is sold rather than published: AWS's Filler Metal Comparison Charts (FMC:2000). Adding a second manufacturer's catalog would put a second brand's product codes beside these, not turn either into generic ones.

Cite as: ESAB recommended filler metals and suggested preheat group, by ASTM steel grade, referencesource.org/esab-filler-metal-recommendations-by-astm-steel-grade/, checked 2026-08-19.

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