Hey shapeoko fans! I’m curious about Y axis strength. Is it possible to stop it by hand?Or move it when it is not moving?
Manually movement is Highly not recommended.
With the power on and steppers engaged it will very difficult to move any of the axis at all.
Your best bet for such “advanced” techniques is to use the pause hold feed feature of the GRBL board and try something that way.
What is the real purpose of your question?
Drive system in Shapeoko is based on timming belts with small ratio. Moving axis manually with bare hand would show how much holding power has shapeoko. Is it strong enough to stay in position when I will force it to move.
The answer is yes. The axis doesn’t move.
thanks for your answer!
It depends on a lot of things. The torque of the stepper motors, the rating of the stepper driver, the size of the pulley, the shape of the tooth profile on the belt and the width of the belt.
With the motors engaged can I move the gantry? No.
My setup:
GT2 - 2mm belts 6mm wide with 20T pulleys
(2) 125 oz-in NEMA 23 stepper motors driven by DRV8825’s
What he said! 
Thanks for info. I’m making little CNC with similar drive as ShapeOko: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtojdCWCOTQ
But, in my machine gantry is much heavier. I achieve 10m/min speed and I needed comparison with Shapeoko;)