Inconel 601 reaction to heat - electrical resistance changed somehow?

[USAeng]

Does anyone know if inconel 601 reacts to heat- if it changes the electrical resistance somehow even after the heat is removed and it is cooled? like does heat make the inconel material actually create more chromium or nickel on the surface? I dont know much about it... so I hope someone else might be able to fill me in. Just trying to figure out why the resistance is changing drastically with the addition of heat between 2 inconel 601 parts. Thanks.

 

[VEBill]

Wiki: "When heated, Inconel forms a thick, stable, passivating oxide layer protecting the surface from further attack."

Hmmm...

 

[USAeng]

thanks... I figured something like that happened... should have tried wiki first lol...

so I am still trying to understand what is going on here... here is more details-

there is an inconel electrode in the middle that gets 2000v from a capacitor... it arcs across this conductive material that is more like a semiconductor that is there basically to give the spark a path to another piece of inconel which is about 1/16" away

after the spark pops about 100 times the resistance is measured across the two inconel pieces and it is much higher than previous...say it is about 1kohm then you test it and it reaches about 60kohm after the testing... then if you heat it with a heat gun it goes back down to single digits. I do not understand what is going on... if it is something with the inconel or the semiconductive material in the middle or maybe a combination... I will be contacting the company that makes the semiconductive material tomorrow to talk with them

either way the spark is still happening which is good... I just want to try to understand the changes in resistance.