Cast iron is one of the oldest technical alloys used for creating objects. Foundrymen from the very beginning of casting was fighting to avoid casting defects. In the beginning a successfully performed casting was associated with witchcraft. Cast component producers suffer yearly substantial expenses due to rejecting or repairing castings. The present work will summarize research efforts to understand formation mechanisms of defects, performed in collaboration with Swedish foundries during the last years. The presented work will focus on defects, specific casting of gray iron components. Studied defects are gas porosity, shrinkage porosity and metal expansion penetration. Novell experimental set up has been developed or existing methods has been improved to study defect formation mechanisms. Today we can realize that casting without defects are possible only by approaching the defect formation mechanism with multidisciplinary science.