The optimal choice of processing parameters for additive manufacturing (AM) processes focuses on known process regimes, entailing slow build rates that limit the widespread use of AM in mass production. Simulation, however, has the potential to discover new process regimes and provide directions for developing new process strategies to further enhance the capabilities of AM. This contribution focuses on the authors' ongoing work to discover new high-throughput process regimes. Increasing the layer thickness in laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB\M) offers one way to speed up the process. However, thicker powder layers require more laser power to be melted, leading to potential challenges such as keyhole formation and unstable melt pool dynamics. This new process regime is explored with a smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) framework accounting for coupled microfluid-powder dynamics with thermo-capillary flow and reversible phase transitions~\cite{Fuchs2022}. The framework is enhanced with a ray tracing scheme to realistically model the laser-powder interaction, which is especially relevant for deep melt pools. First insights into the melting of thick powder layers are shown, e.g., on the choice of optimal laser powers for melting thick layers and different beam shapes to influence melt pool behavior.